BAR and BARfly are all about improving readability and usability of file formats.  Therefore, it might seem somewhat of an anathema to be creating so many new data formats in an attempt to standardize everything!

In fact, we mitigate this problem by providing implementation files for all the "new" data formats.  The file formats are relatively simple to understand, and made even simpler by the fact that you have BARfly working on your behalf.  The following file formats are specific to BAR:

• BAR - Binary Artifact Reference Implementation File
• FFR - BAR File Format Registry
• USS - BARfly Universal State Save
• UTD - BARfly Universal Text Dump

BAR - Binary Artifact Reference Implementation File

The BAR file format is discussed in detail in the body of this documentation.  The text syntax is straightforward, and the binary syntax is easily understood by employing BAR_Basic.bar.  Use a BAR file to read a BAR file?  Why not?

Please note that some implementation files downloaded from the official BARfly website are not intended to be read using BARfly.  How much "source information" you get for some of these downloads depends on the cost and support difficulty of the file format.

FFR - BAR File Format Registry

The BAR registry file format is very straightforward.  In fact, a savvy BARfly user can perform their own registry edits using FFR.bar without even using the BARfly registry interface.

USS - Universal State Save

A "universal state save" file is synonymous with what BARfly uses to store clipboard data.  A BAR implementation file is embedded within the USS file, giving you a schema source.  The remainder of the data closely resembles the actual data storage format per its implementation in the BAR engine.  Use USS.bar to view this "universal" form of data.

UTD - Universal Text Dump

A "universal text dump" file has the same syntax as UTD dump view.  Like other text-friendly data formats, you can edit the contents with any text editor.

UTD is especially important in that you can often directly copy some of the data in this format into program code in the form of initialized data, and vice versa.  The sizable gap between how programs handle data in code and how binary files actually exists on the disk has virtually gone away.

  See also: [BAR implementation file reference] [Working with BAR registries]