hi there again i guess i was not very clear as to what i want to do. here's the deal. i have a fortran program that spits out a binary file on an HP/UX (i'm trying to rewrite the program in C++ on Linux). now a person in italy would like to use the binary output, but she's currently working on a VAX. what changes to i have to do to my fortran code so that the binary output would be readable on a VAX? TYA pd