HACKER Q&A
📣 luuuzeta

What are some examples of well-designed binary file format specs?


This is my first time working with binary data, binary specifications, etc., and I've started to mess around with the dBASE file format [0] after reading about it in NodeJS in Practice [1]. I know about the usual ones (e.g., PNG, JPEG, etc) at least by name and I'm now wondering about what's out there, especially less well-known formats or niche ones.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.dbf

1: https://www.manning.com/books/node-js-in-practice

  👤 compressedgas Accepted Answer ✓
Bento container format specification: https://web.archive.org/web/20120906101250/http://info.wgbh.... or https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
👤 PaulHoule
ZIP file format: https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT
👤 rahimnathwani
Maybe check out the descriptions of 'packing' and 'compression' here:

https://capnproto.org/encoding.html