ABSTRACT
Having stored information in a particular data format, how do we get it back out again? How easy is it to access the data? The answer naturally depends on which data format we are dealing with.
For data stored in plain text files, it is very easy to find software that can read the files, although the software may have to be provided with additional information about the structure of the files-where the data values reside within the file-plus information about what sorts of values are stored in the file-whether the data are, for example, numbers or text.
