Warthog systems file formats
The format for standard Warthog text files (extension .WHtext) 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.

Actual 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, created by the acquisition program LabHelper, is roughly similar, but they start with a text code value (the first value in the file).  All other numeric data are encoded in 4-byte FutureBasic binary format.  Current versions use a floating-point (FP) format with a text code of "-999" or (for large files) "-9999"; 64-bit versions use "-19999" (note that this FP format is not the same as the 4-byte IEEE binary floating point frequently used by DOS/Windows software). These files have the extension .whog (for multi-channel 'chart' files) or .whsc (for single-channel 'oscilloscope' files).

Each text string is NOT in quotes, but it is preceded by a FP real value equal to the number of characters in the string.  Commas (and other delimiters) are not used.   The sample data are stored channel-by-channel, not case-by-case.  Due to this complexity, for most files you might want to create yourself, using the Warthog text format or a simple text spreadsheet (see below) is considerably simpler

 

This icon is used to indicate binary files saved from LabAnalyst (they have identical formats to 'raw' binary files generated by LabHelper, but the different icon helps let you know if you've worked on a file previously.   These files have the extension .WHdata

 

  • Binary files created by all but the oldest LabHelper versions can have comments of up to 32K characters, and also contain information on the type of A-D converter used to acquire the data.

SSCF and ExpeData  These formats are used by Sable Systems software on Windows computers.  Because data must undergo translation between IEEE and Warthog formats, disk access to SSCF/ExpeData files isn't quite as fast as for Warthog binary files (but this is almost unnoticeable for all but very large files).  When transfered from a Windows machine to a Mac, these files can appear with several icon types (all of these have the same internal format -- just the extension is different):

'Raw' file from Windows;
extension .exp 		'Raw' file; extension modified to .expS

File saved by LabAnalyst
in Sable format;
extension .WHSable

These icons will will not appear on a Windows machine.

Text format (ASCII)  The format for ASCII output is a simple spreadsheet with commas or tabs as column delimiters, with each row terminated with a carriage return. The first line can contain column labels.

maximum-sized files -- even in the compact binary formats -- are large.  They require about 8 Mb of disk space per channel for a two million sample file (so a 2 million X 16-channel file fills roughly 130 mb!).   A text-format file will typically require considerably more space than a binary file that contains identical data.

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