A flexible format for exchanging pulsar data

We describe a data format currently in use amongst European institutions for exchanging and archiv- ing pulsar data. The format is designed to be as flexible as possible with regard to present and future compatibil- ity with dierent operating systems. One application of the common format is simultaneous multi-frequency ob- servations of single pulses. A data archive containing over 2500 pulse proles stored in this format is now available via the Internet, together with a small suite of computer programs that can read, write and display the data.