ASCII Data Format
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) format data files are plain text files where each line of text in the file is a price record. The example below shows records in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format with Date, Time, Open, High, Low, Close and Volume fields separated by commas:
08/27/2008,09:35,78.17,78.17,78.00,78.00,76400
08/27/2008,09:40,78.00,78.05,77.77,78.05,50500
08/27/2008,09:45,78.05,78.09,78.00,78.08,49200
08/27/2008,09:50,78.05,78.10,77.96,77.96,31400
08/27/2008,09:55,77.98,78.14,77.93,78.07,33600
08/27/2008,10:00,78.06,78.10,77.70,77.92,63100
08/27/2008,10:05,77.93,77.93,77.80,77.80,40600
08/27/2008,10:10,77.80,77.88,77.70,77.82,39700
08/27/2008,10:15,77.86,77.87,77.80,77.80,29600
08/27/2008,10:20,77.80,78.01,77.78,78.01,57400
08/27/2008,10:25,77.98,78.07,77.90,77.96,35200
08/27/2008,10:30,77.92,78.04,77.80,77.94,33900
The first line of the file is often a header that defines the content of the fields in the records that follow. QCollector gives you the option of whether or not to include an ASCII header in your data files.
Many trading and charting programs are able to read and use ASCII data files.
ASCII data files can be opened and edited in any text editor such as Windows Notepad.