FileFormats

This page gives hints on how to manage file formats, and the interfacing with other applications outside of the ABINIT organisation with the ABINIT package.

Introduction

For a long time, ABINIT has produced files in either text format or in Fortran binary format. This has the drawback of being difficult to read by other codes, and also being difficult to maintain in the long run, as any change must be propagated to the reading routines.

Following the advent of the Nanoquanta/ETSF file format, ABINIT has gradually shifted toward the use of file formats that are addressable by content, especially NetCDF and XML.

NetCDF is used to file that typically store a large amount of data, like wavefunctions, density, potentials, etc . One should even shift to HDF5 in due time for these files.

XML is used for smaller files. E.g. PSML pseudopotentials can be used, these being common with the SIESTA code. YAML files have allso recently appeared, for the ABINIT documentation.

Related Input Variables

No variable associated to this topic.

Selected Input Files

No input file associated to this topic.