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International
Tables for Crystallography Volume G Definition and exchange of crystallographic data Edited by S. R. Hall and B. McMahon © International Union of Crystallography 2006 |
International Tables for Crystallography (2006). Vol. G. ch. 5.4, p. 538
Section 5.4.12.10. Management of white space
a
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Kramer Science Center, Dowling College, Idle Hour Blvd, Oakdale, NY 11769, USA, and bSchool of Biomedical and Chemical Sciences, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Perth, WA 6009, Australia |
CIF does not care about white space. One blank or tab is equivalent to many blanks or tabs or empty lines in separating data names from values and values from one another. The internal routine getstr extracts the next white-space-delimited string, using getlin to deliver input lines from the direct-access file as required. Since Fortran does not provide dynamic memory allocation, this approach presents a problem with multi-line text fields. Rather than allocate a large fixed space that might not hold still larger text fields, the library delivers those strings one line at a time. As with case sensitivity, CIFtbx does white-space scanning repeatedly, keeping the original presentation (including tabs) available should an application need access to it. The author of an application needing maximum speed, not needing the original presentation and wishing to conserve disk space might wish to modify the operation of CIFtbx to remove all comments and compress all separating white space to single blanks or line terminators in an initial sweep.
