Guide to RSF format

Form

The data stored with RSF can also be in a different form: ASCII, native binary, and XDR binary. Native binary is often used by default. It is the binary format employed by the machine that is running the application. On Linux-running PC, the native binary format will typically correspond to the so-called little-endian byte ordering. On some other platform, it might be big-endian ordering. XDR is a binary format designed by Sun for exchanging files over network. It typically corresponds to big-endian byte ordering. It is more efficient to process RSF files in the native binary format but, if you intend to access data from different platforms, it might be a good idea to store the corresponding file in an XDR format. RSF also allows for an ASCII (plain text) form of data files.

Conversion between different types and forms is accomplished with sfdd program. Here are some examples. First, let us create synthetic data.

bash$ sfmath n1=10 output='10*sin(0.5*x1)' > sin.rsf
bash$ sfin sin.rsf
sin.rsf:
    in="/tmp/sin.rsf@"
    esize=4 type=float form=native
    n1=10          d1=1           o1=0
        10 elements 40 bytes
bash$ < sin.rsf sfdisfil
   0:             0        4.794        8.415        9.975        9.093
   5:         5.985        1.411       -3.508       -7.568       -9.775

Converting the data to the integer type:

bash$ < sin.rsf sfdd type=int > isin.rsf
bash$ sfin isin.rsf
isin.rsf:
    in="/tmp/isin.rsf@"
    esize=4 type=int form=native
    n1=10          d1=1           o1=0
        10 elements 40 bytes
bash$ < isin.rsf sfdisfil
   0:    0    4    8    9    9    5    1   -3   -7   -9

Converting the data to the ASCII form:

bash$ < sin.rsf sfdd form=ascii > asin.rsf
bash$ < asin.rsf sfdisfil
   0:             0        4.794        8.415        9.975        9.093
   5:         5.985        1.411       -3.508       -7.568       -9.775
bash$ sfin asin.rsf
asin.rsf:
    in="/tmp/asin.rsf@"
    esize=0 type=float form=ascii
    n1=10          d1=1           o1=0
        10 elements
bash$ cat /tmp/asin.rsf@
0 4.79426 8.41471 9.97495 9.09297 5.98472 1.4112 -3.50783
-7.56803 -9.7753

Guide to RSF format