In this chapter examples are presented as an aid to understanding the structures defined and explained in Chapter 2. Space does not permit listing entire example programs here; therefore, isolated fragments of code are used to illustrate concepts. These fragments are written in Fortran, C code, and IDL (Interactive Data Language, from Research Systems, Inc., of Boulder, Colorado). The reader who is unfamiliar with one or more of these languages should still be able to follow the examples. Note that the programming statements shown are merely illustrative--data declarations, error checking, et cetera, are omitted here, although such things would be necessary in any working program. In other words, these code fragments are examples to be studied, not templates to be copied slavishly.
The first section, for example, deals with writing the TEST record in several languages. In Section 3.2, examples illustrate how dimensions are specified in a df dataset. In Section 3.3, the use of the START and END fields found in various records is shown. In Section 3.4, the information in the AUDIT record is discussed. Finally, in Section 3.5, various examples are provided showing how to specify auxiliary information.