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What is the full form of DIF in Computer?
Full form of DIF: Here, we are going to learn what does DIF stands for? DIF – which is an abbreviation of "Data Interchange Format" in Computer Acronyms/Abbreviations, etc.
Submitted by Anushree Goswami, on December 02, 2020
DIF: Data Interchange Format
DIF is an abbreviation of "Data Interchange Format". It is a text based file format, which is used fundamentally to bring in or transfer particular spreadsheets among spreadsheet programs such as Excel, FileMaker, StarCalc, dBase etc.
History
- In the beginning of 1980s, DIF was designed and created by Software Arts, Inc.
- Robert M. Frankston, an American software engineer and businessman, who is also the co-founder of Software Arts, Inc. designed and created the Data Interchange Format, with the help of Mitch kapor.
Syntax
DIF, with the purpose to make the reduction of a lot of various cross-platform concerns and matters, stores up each and every single data in an ASCII text file.
The DIF, ASCII text file is classified into 2 sections, which comprise:
- Header
- Data
- In DIF, the presentation of every single data is in the form of a 2- or 3-line chunk, in which Headers acquire a 3-line chunk and data acquire 2.
- The beginning of Header chunks is:
- By means of a text identifier that is entirely in capital, consists of simply just alphabetic characters, and less than 32 letters.
- The next line should be a pair of numbers, and
- The third line required to be a quoted string.
- Values: A value takes up two lines, in which the first consists of a pair of numbers and the second consists of either a string or a keyword. The foremost number of the pair signifies type, which comprises:
- −1 – directive type
- 0 – numeric type
- 1 – string type
- Header chunk: A header chunk is arranged by an identifier line, which is tagged along by the two lines of a value.
- TABLE
- VECTORS
- TUPLES
- DATA
Reference: Data Interchange Format
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