Editing IBM hexadecimal floating-point (section)

== Special uses ==
The IBM HFP format is used in:

* SAS 5 Transport files (.XPT) as required by the [[Food and Drug Administration]] (FDA) for New Drug Application (NDA) study submissions,<ref name="SAS">{{cite web |url=http://support.sas.com/techsup/technote/ts140.pdf |title=The Record Layout of a Data Set in SAS Transport (XPORT) Format |access-date=September 18, 2014}}</ref>
* [[GRIB]] (GRIdded Binary) data files to exchange the output of weather prediction models (IEEE [[single-precision floating-point format]] in current version),
* [[GDSII|GDS II]] (Graphic Database System II) format files ([[Open Artwork System Interchange Standard|OASIS]] is the replacement), and
* [[SEG Y]] (Society of Exploration Geophysicists Y) format files (IEEE single-precision floating-point was added to the format in 2002).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.seg.org/documents/10161/77915/seg_y_rev1.pdf|title=SEG Y rev 1 Data Exchange format, Release 1.0|date=May 2002}}</ref>

As IBM is the only remaining provider of hardware using the HFP format, and as the only IBM machines that support that format are their mainframes, few file formats require it.  One exception is the SAS 5 Transport file format, which the FDA requires; in that format, "All floating-point numbers in the file are stored using the IBM mainframe representation. [...] Most platforms use the IEEE representation for floating-point numbers. [...] To assist you in reading and/or writing transport files, we are providing routines to convert from IEEE representation (either big endian or little endian) to transport representation and back again."<ref name="SAS"/> Code for IBM's format is also available under [[GNU Lesser General Public License|LGPLv2.1]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SASxport/SASxport.pdf|title=Package 'SASxport'|date=March 10, 2020|access-date=July 19, 2016|archive-date=August 18, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160818122524/https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SASxport/SASxport.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>