handwriting recognition system

hi every one
Anyone knows how to accessing .dat file can be dealt with. I am trying to access a handwritten character images which is in dat format. It is giving me errors like:
1. load spine.dat;
??? Error using ==> load
Number of columns on line 4 of ASCII file G:\TIES-project\spine.dat
must be the same as previous lines.
2. f = textread('spine.dat');
??? Error using ==> dataread
Trouble reading number from file (row 1, field 1) ==>

Error in ==> textread at 176
[varargout{1:nlhs}]=dataread('file',varargin{:});
3. even using fopen and fscanf is not working.

I can't access the dat file ffrom database, It would be great if someone could help me as my work is hanging on due to this. I can't go ahead before I get this done.
.
Thank You

hi pradeep,

you have not mention on what your are trying this.

if it is matllab ...normal fopen will work
here is the matlab example
Copy 5 bytes from the file test1.dat, starting at the tenth byte, and append to the end of test2.dat:

% Create files test1.dat and test2.dat
% Each character uses 8 bits (1 byte)

fid1 = fopen('test1.dat', 'w+');
fwrite(fid1, 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ');

fid2 = fopen('test2.dat', 'w+');
fwrite(fid2, 'Second File');

% Seek to the 10th btye ('J'), read 5
fseek(fid1, 9, 'bof');
A = fread(fid1, 5, 'uint8=>char');
fclose(fid1);

% Append to test2.dat
fseek(fid2, 0, 'eof');
fwrite(fid2, A);
fclose(fid2);