Pro/E File Format

• A Neutral file consists of lines of ASCII text.

• A line in a Neutral file beginning with the character "#" is a comment.

• All other lines in a Neutral file are of the form: <level><field><value> , where:

<level> = integer, <field> = name, <value> = string which may be present.

• A <field> must be one of the following:

a. The name of a simple data type (integer,string,real,etc.)

b. The name of an array.

c. The name of a structure

• All the fields on a particular level belong to the same parent.

• When <value> is present at a certain <level> and begins with the character "[", or consists of a series of digits separated by commas, it indicates that <field> is an array of dimension [n]([m]...). The array element values are contained on the lines <level+1> up to the next line starting with <level> again.

For one-dimensional arrays there is only one line at the higher level, whose <value> is a string of element values separated by commas.

The notation "n*m" indicates the following "n" elements each have the value "m".

• When the <value> is present at a certain <level> (and is not the string "->"), then this is the value to be assigned to <field>.

• When <value> is absent at a certain <level> this indicates that <field> is a structure. Immediate elements of the aggregate are contained on lines <level+1> up to the next line starting with <level> again.

• A special case is the line whose <field> is the string "ugc_xar_len" indicating that the next line begins the description of an array of length <value>.

• When <value> is the string "->" this indicates that <field> is a pointer to an aggregate whose elements follow.

• The special <value> string "NULL" indicates that the <field> is a pointer whose value is null.