I deal with binary data all the time and I just use fwrite in C and pack in Perl, and a text readme in vim explaining the (simple) format. I don&#x27;t use Matlab but often need exchange the data with Matlab user; I simply search help page and send the one or two lines of matlab code to them along with the data. I&#x27;ll do the same thing if my fellow colleague switch to numpy tomorrow (it is surprising that they would read HDF5 tutorial but won&#x27;t read my readme).<p>Research data are almost always specific. The idea of a general format serving all research just sounds silly to me.