MetaStock Data Conversion

These command line utilities can be used to convert MetaStock Binary Data Format (MASTER, and the Fxxx.DAT files) to MetaStock ASCII format. The reverse conversion, from ASCII format to MetaStock Binary Data Format is also supported.

Usage:
asc2ms [--master=|-m <master-filename>]
[--file=|-f <ascii-filename>] [--help|-h]
[--version|-v] [--quite|-q] [-o <data-output-directory>]
[--recordFileExist=appendRecord|updateRecord|recordReplace|fileReplace]
[--traversefolders=|-t] [--symbol=|-s <ticker-symbol>]
[--name=|-n <ticker-name> [--useadjustedclose|-u]
[--date=|-d <date-feild> [--reverseOrder|-b]
[--priorityLevel=|-l low|medium|high]

Example:
In the directory where you want to create MASTER and Fxxx.DAT files run
C:\asc2ms -f myascfiles.asc -r r -o masterdir

You will have MASTER and Fxxx.DAT files created in the "masterdir" directory. Before running this program, if you already had MASTER and Fxxx.DAT files, the records with same date, or with same date and time for intraday data files, would be replaced with the data in the ASCII file.

You could also opt for replacing the entire data file by selecting -r fileReplace option. The default is append data record.

You could also opt for traverse destination folders option, to create the MASTER and data files in different directories, by selection -t option. This option is useful if you have more than 255 different securities in your ascii data file.

Data downloaded from Yahoo could also be converted into metastock format Example:

In the directory where you want to create MASTER and Fxxx.DAT files run C:\asc2ms -f myascfiles.csv -o masterdir --symbol TICKER --name TICKER_NAME --useadjustedclose

You will have MASTER and Fxxx.DAT files created in "masterdir" with symbol as TICKER and issue name as TICKER_NAME you could opt to use the adjusted close given by yahoo, in this case all open, high, low and close will be same as "adjusted close" price. Otherwise adjusted close will be ignored.

These utilities do not work on standard i/o files, hence these cannot be piped with other programs.