UREAD(1)

💖 UREAD(1) — the manual page, but make it make sense 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to the UREAD glow-up. It's a General Commands Manual girlie and she is so here to help you peek inside your Fortran files. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

uread — reads a Fortran unformatted file 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

uread [ -x ] [ filename ]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

uread reads a file that was created with Fortran's unformatted IO. For every record it finds, it prints the size of that record in bytes straight to your screen, and then it throws out its best guesses about what sort of data might be hiding inside that record. She's basically a psychic but for bytes. 🔮

Here's the vibe check on those guesses:

• *2 — integer*2, logical*2 data
• *4 — integer, logical, real data
• *8 — integer*8, real*8, double precision, complex data
• *16 — real*16, extended precision, double complex data

Also, when data gets marked with char, that means it contains only writable ASCII characters and white space — so like, it's probably character data. Not a drill, just characters. 🍓

The -x option tells uread to byte swap the input record data. That lets you examine big endian data on a little endian machine, and vice versa. Iconic. It's giving "translator for endian girlies". 🔥

You can drop the file name right there on the command line. If you don't, the data gets read in from the standard input. Either way, she's eating. 😌

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -x — byte swaps the input record data, so you can look at big endian data on a little endian machine, and vis versa. 👑

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💀 NOTE 💀

If you ever see this error message:

uread: data larger than file length

...then don't panic, bestie, it often means the file you're reading has the opposite byte "sex" to the platform you're running uread on. Try the -x flag and see if that's the case. Like, it's lowkey a compatibility moment, not a crisis. 🫶

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

ustrip(1), uswap(1)

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🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

S.E. Norris s.norris@auckland.ac.nz

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and that's the whole page, bestie — she lives in the General Commands Manual, authored with love by S.E. Norris, and yes we're still stanning. periodt. 💖✨🎀