The question there is portability and reusability. Presemably, when you
write out to file for later resue you would use the same program to read it
back in. When the need arises that some other program is expected to
reconstruct the data (i.e. the human factor) then you have to be a bit more
explicit.
Is it for an IBM, then you have to export in EBSIDC
Is it for a PC, the ASCII will prolly suit you fine.
Does it need to go over the web, then perhaps XML is the key for you.
The tried and true way is as a simple Byte(), of course who can read that?
While the need may be ever present in a programmer's world, don't sell
yourself short that the solution is prewrapped. It is bad enough that a lot
of functionality is prewrapped and the libraries are bloated to the hilt.
But because we are programmers, we know how to create our own utilities to
accomplish our tasks as needed.
Rather than use an array, perhaps you can use an arraylist, or even better
system.collection.collectionbase? Nest your data as needed then provide a
nice little tostring() method or serialize(filename) method. Another option
is to pass the Array into a custom array serializer, to minimize the bloat
while you are working with the data.
<da*******@yahoo.comwrote in message
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Ultimately it will need to be presented in a text file, and may likely
even need to be exported to Excel. If I need to save it as a binary
first and then convert to text (or numeric), so be it.
I'm really suprised that there is not a method to invoke the writing of
an entire array to a text file. Seems like it would be a common need
for programmers.