File Formats

All data files are record oriented. They have a sequence of records each with the same variables in the same order. Variables that are multi-dimensional take the natural C ordering, and one entry is required for each element. In time series data the records are ordered on the monotonic increasing time variable.

Two distinct file formats are covered.

1. Tabular data files are ASCII files with records of equal length and fixed column start positions for each entry. These files are identified by the extension ``.qft''.
2. Delimited data files are ASCII files with variable length records, with a delimiter separating each entry. These files are identified by the extension ``.qfd''.