Summary
This document lists recommended practices for formatting and describing American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) encoded data files, such that the files will be self-describing and adhere to common conventions.
Status
The ASCII File Format Guidelines for Earth science data was recommended for use in NASA Earth science data systems in 2016.
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NASA Earth Science Community Recommendations for Use
Strengths
These guidelines address a number of common-sense practices that can make data files encoded in ASCII more widely useful. The recommendations were developed by a community of users from NASA's ESDS community. The guidelines are meant to inform teams of basic practices that will provide for greater interoperability among systems that use data encoded in ASCII.
Weaknesses
This document is meant to provide a checklist approach to be able to test whether a particular format meets the guidelines. As such, it is not possible to provide an exhaustive enumeration of practices that must be done or must be avoided.
Applicability
This document provides a reference to determine whether ASCII data conventions developed by various Earth science communities meet minimum guidelines. Further, the guidelines in this document can inform creators and users of any ASCII-encoded data about whether their data files meet a minimum and necessary set of requirements.
Limitations
The guidelines in this document were developed by a small group of ASCII data producers and consumers. It is likely that there are established ASCII data formats and practices in existence that are viable but don’t meet all of these guidelines.