dat2bin [-t] [-z] DFiles
-t: Dumps data to stdout as text instead of binary. -z: Print version number and current defaults.
It may be sometimes desired to convert .dat data files into a binary form, for example, for fast loading of files with large geometry. Binary files can be somewhat larger, are unreadable in editors but are much faster to load in. A binary file must have a '.bdt' file type.
Example:
dat2bin b58polys.dat > b58polys.bdt
dat2bin -t b58polys.bdt | more
to convert a text file b58polys.dat into a binary file b58polys.bdt and to view the content of the binary file by converting it back to text. At this time data through pipes must be in text. That is, the following is illegal:
dat2bin b58polys.dat | xglmdrvs -
It should be remembered that the binary format is not documented and it might change in the future. Moreover, it is machine dependent and can very well may be unreadible between different platforms.