[datatable-help] fread for bin file?

[Alan Kwan]

I hope this isn't a bone-headed question in either sense of what or how I
am asking, but would it be in principle possible to adapt fread to read
fixed record binary .bin files?

I guess this is more of a feature request, although it's a help request if
someone's figured it out already.

TAQ bin files would be a major usage case, for instance. These are 60 gig
files that are usually 30-33 characters * 600M rows long.

An example would be reading a fixed record length, so imagine something like

 bidsiz<-readBin(qin,what='integer',size=4,n=1,endian='little')
  ofrsiz<-readBin(qin,what='integer',size=4,n=1,endian='little')
  mode<-readBin(qin,what='integer',size=2,n=1,endian='little')
  ex<-readBin(qin,  what='character',size=1,n=1,endian='little')

- Alan
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