Warthog Systems file formats   
LabAnalyst X has seven menus, plus instructions and links in the Help menu and three functions in the LabAnalyst X menu.

  • The format for Warthog text files is shown in the following example.  This is the simplest format that contains most the information that can be used by LabAnalyst.  It can be assembled in most database or spreadsheet programs, or with a word processor.  Note: the comments indicated by two asterisks (**) are NOT part of a real file.

    data
    		 
    Comments on data format
    306,4,3
"07-05-1992","15:09:34"
"female Belding 003, 354.3 g, VO2 stable"
0,1,1,1,0,"% Oxygen                      "
1,3,1,0,2,"Degrees C                     "
0,1,1,5,0,"S.C.C.M.  in heliox           "
3090,354.3,760,0,1550
3
30,49
96,50
157,51
1.953636E-02,-14.64144,3103.476
2.3473535E-02,-14.68532,3124.896
2.702881E-02,-14.87214,3119.073

......  etc.
    		 
    ** # samples, interval in seconds, # channels
** date & time the file was started, IN QUOTES
** comments; up to 252 characters, IN QUOTES
** gain, etc.  for each channel.  The exact values
   are not important, but there must be 5 values
   followed by a 30 character label IN QUOTES.
** flow (ml/min), mass, BP, Temp., effective volume
** number of markers (0 if none)
** for each marker, sample number and ASCII value
  

** sample 1, channels 1, 2, and 3
** sample 2, channels 1, 2, and 3
** sample 3, channels 1, 2, and 3

 (the rest of the data follows here...)

    The format for WartHog BINARY files is roughly similar, but they start with a text code value (the first value in the file).  All other numeric data are encoded in FutureBasic binary format (not the same as the IEEE binary floating point frequently used by DOS/Windows software).  Current versions use a floating-point (FP) format with a text code of "-999" or "-9999" depending on the number of samples.

    • Binary files created by the latest LabHelper can have comments of up to 32K characters, notes entered in 'real time' during acquisition, and information on the A-D converter used.
    Usually it's not possible (or worth the trouble) to create binary files from 'outside' of Warthog, but if you have some process that generates large files, it may be worth using the binary format because loading is faster and disk storage requirements are smaller than for text files.
    • You will need FBtoC™ to write conversion code.

    Sable Systems (SSCF and ExpeData)  These closely-related formats are used by DATACAN (DOS) and ExpeData (Windows) software.  Because data must be translated between IEEE and Warthog formats, disk access to Sable-format files isn't as fast as for Warthog binary files.  Note that the icon shown here will only appear if you save a file in Sable format on a Macintosh running OS X. 

    These sable-image icons will will not appear on a Windows machine, or if an SSCF or ExpeData file was created on a Windows machine and then copied to a Macintosh (a generic 'text' or '.exp' icon is used instead).

    Text format (ASCII)  The format for ASCII input is a simple spreadsheet with commas or tabs as column delimiters, with each row terminated with a carriage return. There can be up to 32 columns (although only 24 can be entered into the final warthog file). The first line can contain column labels.

    Note that maximum-sized files -- even in the compact binary formats -- are quite large.  They require about 13 Mb of disk space per channel for a 3.25-million sample file (so a 24-channel maximum-sized file fills roughly 320 mb!).

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