[Info-vax] Portable OpenVMS binary data format?

[already5chosen at yahoo.com]

On Sunday, July 29, 2018 at 2:04:24 PM UTC+3, John E wrote:
> Maybe there is an easy answer for this...  I'm looking for a binary format on OpenVMS that can be (reasonably) easily read on other systems (linux mainly).
> 
> Ideally this would be fortran or python based but I'd be interested in any general guidelines or tips on how to do this.
> 
> Fortran stream files seemed like a potential way, but our OpenVMS version of Fortran does not do this (HP fortran for itanium, I don't have the version handy but not updated to F2003 if such a version was ever made by HP).
> 
> Thanks in advance!  Both specific and general tips are welcome.  And if the answer is just use ASCII, that's fine too.  ;-)  Just trying to figure out options at this point.

It seems to me, if as you mentioned, python is available, and you are allowed to download python libraries at will then HDF is an obvious answer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_Data_Format