Swapping bytes is only relevant when using the same data on different machines. When using all the facilities described in this manual, the user will most likely be using the UKQCD machine and an SGI machine. This is when problems occur and data transferred from one machine to the other may have made perfect sense on one machine, but will be incompatible on the next. In other words one machine is big endian and the other little endian.

Therefore it is necessary is take account of this when changing from one machine to another. A programme has been provided called convert (written by Stephen Booth) which enables these bytes to be swapped (output file extension .swap) and to convert the file into character form (output file extension .char) for use in BOB. The swap stage can be done on either machine, but the character stage must be done on the machine where the data makes sense, ie. the meaningful floating point numbers must be changed into the character file.