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It is recommended most users download files using the simple column-formatted ascii format, since it is much simpler to use than any of the present CEDAR file types. The first line lists the parameters in the file, and the data follows, one column per parameter.
The five CEDAR file types all use the CEDAR logical record format for the data in the file. All data are stored as 16-bit integers. The four binary formats use 16-bit 2's complement binary integers and the ASCII format uses ASCII representations of the 16-bit integers. The data format is described in the CEDAR Database Format document. The simplest file format is Unblocked binary, which is simply a sequence of binary records. The Blocked binary and NCAR CBF binary are sequential, tape-oriented formats and are described in the CEDAR Database Format document. The Madrigal format is a random-access disk-oriented format which was designed for a Fortran environment. The NCAR ASCII format is an easy-to-use format which is widely used for submitting small datasets to NCAR, and for preparing catalog and header records. It is described in the CEDAR Database Format document.