The Binary Format Description (BFD) language is an extension of

XSIL XSIL (Extensible Scientific Interchange Language) is an XML-based transport language for scientific data, supporting the inclusion of both in-file data and Metadata (computing), metadata. The language comes with an extensible Java (programming lan ...

which has added conditionals and the ability to reference files by their stream numbers, rather than by their public

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...

s. A

template Template may refer to: Tools * Die (manufacturing), used to cut or shape material * Mold, in a molding process * Stencil, a pattern or overlay used in graphic arts (drawing, painting, etc.) and sewing to replicate letters, shapes or designs Co ...

written in the BFD language can be applied to a binary data file to produce a file with that data formatted with descriptive

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

tags. Such XML-tagged data is then readable by humans and generally by a wider set of computer programs than could read the original data file.

External links

Binary Format Description (BFD) Language
XML-based standards Data modeling languages {{prog-lang-stub