Data Interchange Format

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Data Interchange Format (.dif) is a text file format used to import/export single spreadsheets between spreadsheet programs (Excel, Gnumeric, StarCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, FileMaker, dBase, Framework, Multiplan, etc.). One limitation is that DIF format cannot handle multiple spreadsheets in a single workbook.

[edit] Syntax

DIF stores everything in an ASCII text file to mitigate many cross-platform issues. The file is divided into 2 sections: header and data. Everything in DIF is represented by a 2- or 3-line chunk. Headers get a 3-line chunk; data, 2. Header chunks start with a text identifier that is all caps, only alphabetic characters, and less than 32 letters. The following line must be a pair of numbers, and the third line must be a quoted string. On the other hand, data chunks start with a number pair and the next line is a string.

For example, assume we have two columns with one column header row and two data rows:

Text	Number
hello	1
has a double quote " in text	-3

In a .dif file, this would be

TABLE
0,1
"EXCEL"
VECTORS
0,2
""
TUPLES
0,3
""
DATA
0,0
""
-1,0
BOT
1,0
"Text"
1,0
"Number"
-1,0
BOT
1,0
"hello"
0,1
V
-1,0
BOT
1,0
"has a double quote "" in text"
0,-3
V
-1,0
EOD