Warthog file formats

  • 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   It is obsolete but can still be read (but not written) by current versions.  It can be assembled in most database or spreadsheet programs, or with a word processor.  Note: rows are terminated by carriage returns, and 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, sampling 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 follow 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, such as Sable Systems ExpeData).  Current versions use a floating-point (FP) format with a text code, such as "-999" or "-9999" or "-19999", depending mainly 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.

    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, especially when data are written to disk.  Note that the icon shown here will only appear if you save a file in Sable format on a Macintosh running macOS. 

    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).

    If you change the suffix of an ExpeData file from .exp to .expS, it will appear with the icon shown at left, instead of a generic icon (note that this will only occur if you've installed LabAnalyst and run it at least once).

    Delimited text format  The format for text input is a simple spreadsheet with commas or tabs as column delimiters (.csv or .txt, respectively), with each row terminated with a carriage return.   There can be numerous data columns, but only 40 can be read 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 24 Mb of disk space per channel for a 6-million sample file (so a 40-channel maximum-sized binary file fills roughly 1 gb.   Text .csv files can be considerably bigger.).

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