Name
sdf - Specifications of the SDF file format Description
An SDF file is a text file, where each object occupies one line. Empty lines are ignored. The structure of a User Object is similar to a CSV file; in SDF, the values are separated by a semicolon. Below the schematic description is a real-world example. [enum;]nname;vname;xuid;sgroup 1;Engelhardt;Jan;12.3.45;11 The different fields are:
Comments
Comments are similar to shell or C, and as shown in the syntax above, they either begin with a hash mark in the first column, or start with (* and end with *). Both comment types only last for the particular line. The hash-mark style comment may be unsupported within Kolleg. The following will have an impact in the SDF reader (it will not work) (supply/sdf2xml) as of yet: Surname;Name;Birthdate;Class (* comment *) Portability issues
The only application that exports SDF files is "Kolleg" (a secretary program for German colleges). It is a DOS/16 program and thus exports in ASCII/CRLF mode. Anyone wishing to use Spark should use the sdf2xml utility. Under circumstances, you probably will need to modify it to suit your SDF specs. If the newline termination sequence is only \x0A, the ANSI set is assumed, which is used throughout Linux. Also see sdf2xml's -a option. Bugs
The newline termination sequence scanner can not truly run automated, as having CRLF is NO indication of using ASCII. The -a option may help, though.
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