Technical data

Defining Symbols
8.6 Entering Shared Symbols
Programming with STEP 7
212 Manual, 05/2010, A5E02789666-01
Data Interchange Format (DIF)
File Type *.DIF
Structure: A DIF file consists of the file header and the data:
Header TABLE Start of a DIF File
0,1
"<Title>" Comment string
VECTORS Number of records in the file
0,<No. of records>
""
TUPLES Number of data fields in a record
0,<No. of columns>
""
DATA ID for the end of the header and start of the data
0,0
""
Data (per record) <type>,<numeric value> ID for the data type, numeric value
<String> Alphanumeric part or
V if the alphanumeric part is not used
Header: the file header must contain the record types TABLE, VECTORS, TUPLES, and DATA in
the order specified. Before DATA, DIF files can contain further, optional record types. These are,
however, ignored by the Symbol Editor.
Data: in the data part, each entry consists of three parts: the ID for the Type (data type), a numeric
value, and an alphanumeric part.
You can open, edit, and save DIF files in Microsoft Excel. You should not use accents, umlauts, or
other special language characters.