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<title>ploticus: input data formats</title>
<body bgcolor=D0D0EE vlink=0000FF>
<br>
<br>
<center>
<table cellpadding=2 bgcolor=FFFFFF width=550 ><tr>
<td>
<table cellpadding=2 width=550><tr>
<td><br><h2>Input data formats</h2></td>
<td align=right>
<small>
<a href="../doc/Welcome.html"><img src="../doc/ploticus.gif" border=0></a><br>
<a href="../doc/Welcome.html">Welcome</a>
<a href="../gallery/index.html">Gallery</a>
<a href="../doc/Contents.html">Handbook</a>
<td></tr></table>
</td></tr>
<td>
<br>
<br>
<title>Manual page for Input_data_formats(PL)</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
<a href="getdata.html">
proc getdata
</a>
is used to read or specify plotting data.<tt> </tt>
<a href="trailer.html">
proc trailer
</a>
may be used to place larger amounts of embedded plot data
at the end of the script file, to get it out of the way.<tt> </tt>
Ploticus can read tabular data from files, from command results, or data may be
embedded in the ploticus script.<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
<h2>Plotting from data fields</h2>
<p>
Plotting and data display operations are done
using fields. Taking a look at the first example data set below,
we might draw a bar graph using the values in field 2,
and draw error bars using the values in field 3.<tt> </tt>
The bars could be labeled with the values in field 4, or
perhaps field 1.<tt> </tt>
<p>
If your data exists in a state such that additional processing is
required in order to display it in a desired way, you may be able
to manipulate it after it is read by ploticus, using
<a href="processdata.html">
proc processdata
</a>
, to perform accumulation, tabulation and counting, rewriting
as percents, computation of totals, reversing record order,
rotation of row/column matrix, break processing, etc.<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
<h2>Recognized data formats</h2>
Data files or streams should be plain ascii text, not binary, and should be organized as a
collection of rows having one or more fields.<tt> </tt>
Fields may have numeric or alphanumeric content and may be delimited in one of these ways:
<br><br><br>
<ul>
<li>
<b>spacequoted</b>
<br>
<pre>
F1 2.43 0.47 "Jane Doe" PF7955
F2 2.79 0.28 "John Smith" PT2705
F3 2.62 0.37 "Ken Brown" PB2702
F4 "" "" "Bud Flippner" PX7205
</pre>
Fields are delimited by one or more spaces or tabs.<tt> </tt>
Fields may be enclosed in double quotes ("), and such fields may have
embedded white space. Blank fields may be represented as shown.<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
<li>
<b>whitespace</b>
<br>
<pre>
F1 2.43 0.47 Jane_Doe PF7955
F2 2.79 0.28 John_Smith PT2705
F3 2.62 0.37 Ken_Brown PB2702
F4 - - Bud_Flippner PX7205
...
</pre>
Fields are delimited by one or more spaces or tabs.<tt> </tt>
No quote processing is done.<tt> </tt>
Blank fields must be represented using a code, and
alphanumeric fields cannot contain white space.<tt> </tt>
Parsing of <tt>whitespace</tt> data is faster than processing
of <tt>spacequoted</tt> data.<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
<li>
<b>tab delimited</b>
<br>
<pre>
F1 2.43 0.47 Jane Doe
F2 2.79 0.28 John Smith
F3 2.62 0.37 Ken Brown
F4 Bud Flippner
...
</pre>
Fields are separated by a single tab.
Zero length fields are taken to be blank.<tt> </tt>
Data fields cannot have embedded tabs.<tt> </tt>
The first field must start at the very beginning of the line.<tt> </tt>
The last field in a row may be terminated by a tab or not.<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
<li>
<b>comma delimited</b>
<pre>
"F1",2.43,0.47,"Jane Doe"
"F2",2.79,0.28,"John Smith"
"F3",2.62,0.37,"Ken Brown"
"F4",,,"Hello""world"
...
</pre>
Also known as comma-quote delimited or CSV. Fields are separated by commas.
Alphanumeric fields are enclosed in double quotes (although ploticus really
doesn't care about this unless a field contains embedded whitespace or comma
characters).<tt> </tt>
Zero length fields and fields containing "" are taken to be blank.<tt> </tt>
An embedded double quote is represented using ("") as seen in row F4 above.<tt> </tt>
No whitespace is allowed before or after fields (although this
apparently is tolerated in the CSV spec).<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
</ul>
<p>
<b>Notes:</b>
<p>
Data that is specified within a script is subject to script processing: leading white space
is stripped off and the script interpreter will attempt to evaluate constructs that look like
operators or variables.<tt> </tt>
<p>
Empty rows and commented rows are ignored (the comment marker may be specified via
<a href="getdata.html">
proc getdata
</a>
) .<tt> </tt>
<p>
Data sets with variable number of fields may be accomodated by specifying
<a href="getdata.html">
proc getdata
</a>
attribute <tt>nfields</tt>.<tt> </tt>
Otherwise, the first usable row will dictate the expected number of fields per record.<tt> </tt>
If a row has <b>more</b> than the expected number of fields, extra fields are silently ignored.<tt> </tt>
If a row has <b>less</b> than the expected number of fields, blank fields are silently added
until the record has same number of fields as other records.<tt> </tt>
<tt>nfields</tt> may also be used to read only the first few fields on every row, and ignore the rest.<tt> </tt>
<p>
Leading white space is allowed when using <tt>spacequoted</tt> or <tt>whitespace</tt> delimitation.<tt> </tt>
It is not allowed on the other types.<tt> </tt>
<p>
Each row, including the last one, should be terminated with the standard line terminator
for your system. For unix systems this is the newline character.<tt> </tt>
For Win32 it is CR/LF; these are handled properly by MingW builds but not by unix builds.<tt> </tt>
<p>
The data parser was improved for version 2.02; earlier versions did not support zero-length
fields or data sets with variable number of fields.<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
<h2>Missing data</h2>
Missing data values may be represented using a code or by a zero-length field, if the
specific delimitation method allows them.<tt> </tt>
When plotting,
missing values are generally skipped over, but exactly what occurs depends on
what kind of plot operation is being done. The individual plotting
proc manual pages give details.<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
<h2>Embedded #set statements</h2>
Data files may contain embedded <tt>#set</tt> statements for setting ploticus
variables directly from the data file. The syntax is:
<dl>
<dt><dd><p>
<tt>#set VARIABLE = value</tt>.<tt> </tt>
<br><br><br>
</dl>
<h2>Examples</h2>
Gallery examples include:
<br>
<a href="../gallery/scat7.dat">
scat7.dat
</a>
(white-space delimited)
<br>
<a href="../gallery/stock.csv">
stock.csv
</a>
(comma delimited)
<br>
<a href="../gallery/timeline3.htm">
timeline3
</a>
(data specified within script)
<br>
<a href="../gallery/km2.htm">
km2
</a>
(data specified within script).<tt> </tt>
<br>
<br>
</td></tr>
<td align=right>
<a href="Welcome.html">
<img src="../doc/ploticus.gif" border=0></a><br><small>data display engine <br>
<a href="../doc/Copyright.html">Copyright Steve Grubb</a>
<br>
<br>
<center>
<img src="../gallery/all.gif">
</center>
</td></tr>
</table>
<p><hr>
Markup created by <em>unroff</em> 1.0, <tt> </tt> <tt> </tt>February 01, 2002.
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