I understand all your points (I have implemented all sort of parsers, even in mmaped memory regions, jumped around text parsers to not look for '\0' or do in-pl

I understand all your points (I have implemented all sort of parsers, even in mmaped memory regions, jumped around text parsers to not look for '\0' or do in-place changes, etc...) and I agree with them. I think text is a good format for the "truth"; a binary one-to-one representation of that text to avoid floats parsing is the best alternative. Counterintuitive as it is, many times, the text representation takes less space (sometimes there are huge lot of little round values, for examples 0s or 1s or 2s, in some columns).