Data is record oriented with a newline character denoting the end of each record. All records in a file are of the same fixed widt,h with each variable taking a fixed column start position and column maximum width. This allows data to be tabulated for ease of reading and ingestion into other packages. Each data record must contain an entry for each variable in the order specified by the header descriptors. Missing entries must be padded by space characters or a fill value to ensure correct ordered reading. Tab characters are treated as single characters and must not be used in formatting tables of data.
Each variable may be multi-dimensional with the number of entries per variable being the product of the dimensionalities. Thus a velocity vector has three entries and a two by two array has four entries.
The ordering for arrays within a record is the natural `C' ordering, that is, the last index varies the fastest.