Resource Interchange File Format: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:21, 6 April 2006

Revision as of 15:46, 11 April 2006

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The '''Resource Interchange File Format''' ('''RIFF''') is a generic meta-format for storing data in tagged chunks. It was introduced in [[1991]] by [[Microsoft]] and [[International Business Machines|IBM]]. It is a clone of [[Electronic Arts]]'s [[Interchange File Format]], introduced in [[1985]], the only difference being that multi-byte integers are in [[endianness|little-endian]] format, native to the [[80x86]] processor series used in IBM PCs, rather than the big-endian format native to the [[68k]] processor series used in [[Amiga]] and [[Apple Macintosh]] computers, where IFF files were heavily used.

The Microsoft implementation is mostly known through file formats like [[AVI]], [[ANI (animation file format)|ANI]] and [[WAV]], which both use the RIFF meta-format as their basis.

RIFF files consist entirely of "chunks". The overall format is identical to IFF, except for the endianness as previously stated, and the different meaning of the chunk names.