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A comment on Formatting floating point numbers. Parent comment

Re:Formatting floating point numbers by IshKebab on Friday June 14, 2019 @12:23PM (#20184220)
Rubbish. It's possible to have poorly defined text formats just as easily as binary formats. Remind me how to read CSV again? How do I store 64-bit integers in JSON?

Text formats are popular because you don't have to use a special tool to view them. That's the only reason.

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Re:Formatting floating point numbers by cbsmith on Friday June 14, 2019 @07:36PM (#20187531)
> Text formats are popular because you don't have to use a special tool to view them. That's the only reason.

But you need a special tool to get a computer to read them. Seems like not a win. Throw in compression & encryption... and suddenly you need a special tool anyway.

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