Extract text from NAMES files
To convert your NAMES file to another format, you need Weka or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Machine Learning Schema" file type, you need software like Weka or a similar tool.
A .NAMES file is primarily a plain text metadata file used in machine learning to define the structure, attributes, and classes of a corresponding dataset. Originating from the C4.5 algorithm and widely popularized by the UCI Machine Learning Repository and Weka, these files function as a schema for DATA files, listing variable names and their types (e.g., continuous, discrete) or class labels. In modern computer vision, .NAMES files are also used by the YOLO (You Only Look Once) and Darknet frameworks to store a simple list of object class names (e.g., "person", "car") for object detection models.
While .NAMES files are human-readable, they present significant friction for modern data workflows. Because they are separated from the actual data points (stored in DATA files), users cannot simply double-click them to view a complete spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or load them directly into Python libraries like Pandas without writing custom parsing scripts. Furthermore, the syntax variations between C4.5 definitions and Darknet class lists can cause compatibility errors in automated pipelines. To make this metadata usable, it is best to convert .NAMES files to JSON for web integration, XML for strict schema validation, or CSV (as a header row) to merge with raw data. For documentation purposes, converting to standard TXT or PDF ensures the schema remains accessible without specialized ML software.
Convert.Guru analyzes your NAMES file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted ARFF, TES, GOLD and NUMBERS files.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our NAMES converter.