Binary files are used as an efficient and accurate means to provide data to another program, for example, a report writer. Binary representation of real numbers is more precise than the corresponding ASCII representation. Binary representation retains more significant places. In addition, reading the file is faster since there is no ASCII-to-binary conversion needed.

The binary solution file consists of variable-length records divided into sections. The format for each record is an integer-length entry giving the length of the record in bytes, the data, and another integer-length entry giving the length. The length of the record excludes the two length entries. The format is:

| (length) |   ------data------   |   (length) |

The first record in a binary solution file is:

Data bytes  1 -  8:  'NAME    '
                        9 - 16:  (first 8 characters of problem name)

The last record in a binary solution file is:

Data bytes  1 -  8:  'ENDATA  '
                        9 - 16:  '        '

Three sections are written between the first and last records. Each section starts with three description records:

The field types are represented by integer codes:

The field sizes are the number of bytes for the data item.

The final record of each section contains the string $ENDSEC$. This record is the same length as the other data records within that section, but only the first eight characters are used.

In summary, each of the three sections starts with three description records followed by any number of data records. The $ENDSEC$ string marks the end of a section. A summary of the information specified on the three description records for each of the three sections follows.