Guide to Madagascar programs

sfin: Display basic information about RSF files.

sfin info=y check=2. trail=y [<file0.rsf] file1.rsf file2.rsf ...

n1,n2,... are data dimensions
o1,o2,... are axis origins
d1,d2,... are axis sampling intervals
label1,label2,... are axis labels
unit1,unit2,... are axis units

float	check=2.		Portion of the data (in Mb) to check for zero values.
bool	info=y	[y/n]	If n, only display the name of the data file.
bool	trail=y	[y/n]	If n, skip trailing dimensions of one

sfin is one of the most useful programs for operating with RSF files. It produces quick information on the file hypercube dimensions and checks the consistency of the associated data file.

Here is an example. Let us create an RSF file and examine it with sfin.

bash$ sfspike n1=100 n2=20 > spike.rsf
bash$ sfin spike.rsf
spike.rsf:
    in="/tmp/spike.rsf@"
    esize=4 type=float form=native
    n1=100         d1=0.004       o1=0          label1="Time" unit1="s"
    n2=20          d2=0.1         o2=0          label2="Distance" unit2="km"
        2000 elements 8000 bytes

sfin reports the following information:

• location of the data file (/tmp/spike.rsf)
• element size (4 bytes)
• element type (floating point)
• element form (native)
• hypercube dimensions (100 by 20)
• axes scale (0.004 and 0.1)
• axes origin (0 and 0)
• axes labels
• axes units
• total number of elements
• total number of bytes in the data file

Suppose that the file got corrupted by a buggy program and reports incorrect dimensions. The sfin program should be able to catch the discrepancy.

bash$ echo n2=100 >> spike.rsf
bash$ sfin spike.rsf > /dev/null
sfin:           Actually 8000 bytes, 20% of expected.

sfin also checks the first records in the file for zeros.

bash$ sfspike n1=100 n2=100 k2=99 > spike2.rsf
bash$ sfin spike2.rsf >/dev/null
sfin: The first 32768 bytes are all zeros

The number of bytes to check is adjustable

bash$ sfin spike2.rsf check=0.01 >/dev/null
sfin: The first 16384 bytes are all zeros

You can also output only the location of the data file. This is sometimes handy in scripts.

bash$ sfin spike.rsf spike2.rsf info=n
/tmp/spike.rsf@ /tmp/spike2.rsf@

An alternative is to use sfget, as follows:

bash$ sfget parform=n in < spike.rsf
/tmp/spike.rsf@

Guide to Madagascar programs