Some Background DBFs are binary database table files produced by many database management programs. You usually don't get to see most of the information stored in the header. The header contains information about the structure of the table. In other words, the header explains how the data stored in the records should be interpreted. A database program figures out where one record ends and another begins by doing calculations based on information stored in the header.
Binary data has to be converted based on the way the information is encoded.
The conversion of binary data to human readable form does not always correspond to expectations. Consider converting a DBF containing binary fields to an SDF file. In DBFs, binary fields have a standard width that is specific to the internal representation of the data type. Fields marked with an asterisk in the table above contain binary information. In this case the value fits in four bytes.