9.5.4 Matching Data Representations

It is the user's responsibility to ensure that the data representation used to read data from a file is compatible with the data representation that was used to write that data to the file.

In general, using the same data representation name when writing and reading a file does not guarantee that the representation is compatible. Similarly, using different representation names on two different implementations may yield compatible representations.

Compatibility can be obtained when ``external32'' representation is used, although precision may be lost and the performance may be less than when ``native'' representation is used. Compatibility is guaranteed using "external32" provided at least one of the following conditions is met.

User-defined data representations may be used to provide an implementation compatiblity with another implementation's ``native'' or ``internal'' representation.

Advice to users. Section 10.2.5, page [*], defines routines that support the use of matching datatypes in heterogeneous environments and contains examples illustrating their use.(End of advice to users.)

MPI-Standard for MARMOT