Provided by: libgetdata-doc_0.11.0-13_all 
NAME
dirfile-format — the dirfile database format specification file
DESCRIPTION
The dirfile format specification fully specifies the raw and derived time streams and auxiliary
information for a dirfile(5) database.
The format specification is contained in one or more case-sensitive text files located in the dirfile
tree. Each file is known as a fragment. The primary fragment is the file called format located in the
base dirfile directory. This file may contain only part of the format specification, and may reference
other fragments (using the /INCLUDE directive) containing further format specification. This inclusion
mechanism may be nested arbitrarily deep.
The explicit text encoding of these files is not specified by these Standards, but it must be 7-bit ASCII
compatible. Examples of acceptable character encodings include all the ISO 8859 character sets (i.e.
Latin-1 through Latin-10, among others), as well as the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode and UCS.
This document primarily describes the latest version of the Standards (Version 10); differences with
previous versions are noted where relevant. A complete list of changes between versions is given in the
HISTORY section below.
SYNTAX
The format specification is composed of field specification lines and directive lines, optionally
separated by blank lines or lines containing only whitespace. Lines are separated by the line-feed
character (0x0A). Unless escaped (see below), the hash mark (#) is the comment delimiter; the comment
delimiter, and any text following it to the end of the line, is ignored.
Tokens
Both field specification lines and directive lines consist of several tokens separated by whitespace.
Whitespace consists of one or more whitespace characters. These are: space (0x20), horizontal tab
(0x09), vertical tab (0x0B), form-feed (0x0C), and carriage return (0x0D). The first token of a
directive line is always a reserved word. The first token of a field specification line is never a
reserved word. Any amount of whitespace may precede the first token on a line.
Since tokens are separated by whitespace, to include a whitespace character in a token, it must either
escaped by preceding it by a backslash character (\), or be replaced by a character escape sequence (see
below), or else the token must be enclosed in quotation marks ("). The quotation marks themselves are
stripped from the token. The null-token (that is, the token consisting of zero characters) may be
specified by a pair of quotation marks with nothing between them (""). To include a literal quotation
mark in a token, it must be escaped (\"). Similarly, a hash mark may be included in a token by including
it in a quoted token or else by escaping it (\#), otherwise the hash mark is understood as the comment
delimiter.
It is a syntax error to have a line which contains unmatched quotation marks, or in which the last
character is the backslash character.
Several characters when escaped by a preceding backslash character are interpreted as special characters
in tokens. The character escape sequences are:
\a an alert (bell) character (ASCII 0x07 / U+0007)
\b a backspace character (ASCII 0x08 / U+0008)
\e an escape character (ASCII 0x1B / U+001B)
\f a form-feed character (ASCII 0x0C / U+000C)
\n a line-feed character (ASCII 0x0A / U+000A)
\r a carriage return character (ASCII 0x0D / U+000D)
\t a horizontal tab character (ASCII 0x09 / U+0009)
\v a vertical tab character (ASCII 0x0B / U+000B)
\\ a backslash character (ASCII 0x5C / U+005C)
\ooo the single byte given by the octal number ooo (1 to 3 octal digits).
\xhh the single byte given by the hexadecimal number hh (1 or 2 hexadecimal digits).
\uhhhhhhh
the UTF-8 byte sequence encoding the Unicode code point given by the hexadecimal number
hhhhhhh (1 to 7 hexadecimal digits).
Any other character which is escaped is interpreted as the character itself. (i.e. \c is interpreted as
c; also, as pointed out above, \" and \# are interpreted as simply " and #, without their special
meanings).
No token may contain the NULL character (ASCII 0x00 / U+0000). Furthermore, although support is present
to create UTF-8 byte sequences, tokens are not required to be valid UTF-8 sequences. Any byte sequence
not containing the NULL character forms a valid token. However, there may be further restrictions on
allowed characters for a token in a particular situation, (for example, when used as a field name).
Standards Version 5 and earlier do not recognise the character escape sequences, nor allow quoting of
tokens. As a result, they prohibit both whitespace and the comment delimiter from being used in tokens.
DIRECTIVES
There are ten directives, each specified by a different reserved word, which cannot be used as field
names in the dirfile. As of Standards Version 8, all reserved words start with an initial forward slash
(/), to distinguish them from field names. Standards Versions 5, 6, and 7 permitted the omission of the
initial forward slash, while in Standards Version 4 and earlier, reserved words may not have an initial
forward slash. Like the rest of the format specification, directives are case sensitive.
A number of the directives have fragment scope. A directive with fragment scope only applies to the
fragment in which it is present, plus any sub-fragments indicated by the /INCLUDE directive, but only if
those sub-fragments don't have their own corresponding directive. Directives which have fragment scope
are: /ENCODING, /ENDIAN, /FRAMEOFFSET, and /PROTECT. Because of these scoping rules, different portions
of the dirfile may have different encodings, endiannesses, frame offsets, or protection levels.
If a directive with fragment scope appears more than once in a fragment, only the last such directive is
honoured, with the exception that the effect of a directive is not propagated to sub-fragments if the
directive line appears after the sub-fragment is included. The scoping rules of the remaining directives
are discussed below.
/ALIAS The /ALIAS directive defines an alternate name for a field defined elsewhere in the format
specification (called the "target"). Aliases may not be used as the parent field in a /META
directive, but are in most other ways indistinguishable from the target's original, canonical
name. Aliases may be chained (that is, the target name appearing in an /ALIAS directive may
itself be an alias). In this case, the new alias is another name for the target's own target.
Just as there is no requirement that the input fields of a derived field exist, it is not an error
for the target of an alias to not exist. Syntax is:
/ALIAS <name> <target>
A metafield alias may defined using the <parent-field>/<alias-name> syntax for name in the /ALIAS
directive. No restriction is placed on target; specifically, a metafield alias may target a top-
level field, or a metafield of with a different parent; conversely, a top-level alias may target a
metafield.
A metafield alias may never appear as the parent part of a metafield field code, even if it refers
to a top-level field. That is, given the valid format:
aaaa RAW UINT8 1
aaaa/bbbb CONST FLOAT64 0.0
cccc RAW UINT8 1
/ALIAS cccc/dddd aaaa
the metafield aaaa/bbbb may not be referred to as cccc/dddd/bbbb, even though cccc/dddd is a valid
field code referring to aaaa.
This is not true of top-level aliases: if eeee is an alias of ffff, then ffff/gggg, a metafield of
ffff, may be referred to as eeee/gggg as well.
The /ALIAS directive has no scope: it is processed immediately. It appeared in Standards Version
9.
/ENCODING
The /ENCODING directive specifies the encoding scheme used to encode binary files in the dirfile.
The encoding scheme may be one of the predefined names listed below, which are described in more
detail in dirfile-encoding(5), or any other site-specific encoding scheme. The predefined scheme
names are:
none The dirfile is unencoded.
bzip2 The dirfile is compressed using the bzip2 compression scheme.
flac The dirfile is compressed using the flac compression scheme.
gzip The dirfile is compressed using the gzip compression scheme.
lzma The dirfile is compressed using the LZMA compression scheme.
slim The dirfile is compressed using the slim compression scheme.
sie The dirfile is sample-index encoded (a variant of run-length encoding).
text The dirfile is text encoded.
zzip The dirfile is compressed and encapsulated using the zzip compression scheme.
zzslim The dirfile is compressed and encapsulated using a combination of the zzip and slim
compression schemes.
Implementations should fail gracefully when encountering an unknown encoding scheme. If no
encoding scheme is specified, behaviour is implementation dependent. Syntax is:
/ENCODING <scheme> [<enc-datum>]
The enc-datum token provides additional data for certain encoding schemes; see dirfile-encoding(5)
for details. The form of enc-datum is not specified.
The /ENCODING directive has fragment scope. It appeared in Standards Version 6. The predefined
schemes sie, zzip, and zzslim, and the optional enc-datum token, appeared in Standards Version 9;
the predefined scheme lzma appeared in Standards Version 7; all other predefined schemes appeared
in Standards Version 6.
/ENDIAN
The /ENDIAN directive specifies the endianness of the raw data in the database. The assumed endi‐
anness of raw data in dirfiles which omit this directive is implementation dependent. Syntax is:
/ENDIAN ( big | little ) [ arm ]
where the "arm" token should be included if double precision floating point data are stored in the
ARM middle-endian format. The /ENDIAN directive has fragment scope. It appeared in Standards
Version 5. The optional arm token appeared in Standards Version 8.
/FRAMEOFFSET
The /FRAMEOFFSET directive specifies the frame number of the first frame for which data exists in
binary files associated with RAW fields. Syntax is:
/FRAMEOFFSET <integer>
The /FRAMEOFFSET directive has fragment scope. It appeared in Standards Version 1.
/HIDDEN
The /HIDDEN directive indicates that the specified field name is hidden. The difference (if any)
between a field name which is hidden and one that is not is implementation dependent. Hiddenness
is not inherited by metafields of the specified field. Hiddenness applies to the name, not the
field itself; it does not hide all aliases of the field-name, and if field-name an alias, the
alias is hidden, not its target. Syntax is:
/HIDDEN <field-name>
A /HIDDEN directive must appear after the specification of field-name, (which occurs either in a
field specification line, or an /ALIAS directive, or a /META directive) in the same fragment.
The /HIDDEN directive has no scope: it is processed immediately. It appeared in Standards Version
9.
/INCLUDE
The /INCLUDE directive specifies another file (called a fragment) to parse for additional format
specification for the dirfile. The inclusion is processed immediately, before the fragment con‐
taining the /INCLUDE directive (the parent fragment) is parsed further. RAW fields specified in
the included fragment are located in the directory containing the fragment file, and not in the
directory containing the parent fragment, and the binary file encoding may be different for each
fragment. The fragment may be specified either with an absolute path, or else a path relative to
the directory containing the parent fragment.
The /INCLUDE directive may optionally specify a prefix and/or suffix to apply to field names de‐
fined in the included fragment. If present, affixes are applied to all field-names (including
aliases) defined in the included fragment and any fragments it further includes. Affixes nest,
with the affixes of the deepest inclusion innermost. Affixes are not applied to the names of bi‐
nary files associated with RAW fields. Syntax is:
/INCLUDE <file> [<namespace>.][<prefix>] [<suffix>]
To specify only suffix, the null-token ("") may be used as prefix.
A namespace may also be specified in an /INCLUDE directive by prepending it to prefix. The name‐
space and prefix are separated by a dot (.). The dot is required whenever a namespace is speci‐
fied: if the prefix is empty, the third token should be just the namespace followed by a trailing
dot. If a namespace is specified, that namespace, relative to the including fragment's root name‐
space, becomes the root namespace of the included fragment. If no namespace is specified in the
/INCLUDE directive, then the current namespace (specified by a previous /NAMESPACE directive) is
used as the root namespace of the included fragment. That is, if the current namespace is cur‐
rent_space, then the statement:
/INCLUDE file newspace.
is equivalent to
/NAMESPACE newspace
/INCLUDE file
/NAMESPACE current_space
As a result, if no namespace is provided, and there has been no previous /NAMESPACE directive, the
included fragment will have the same root namespace as the including fragment.
The /INCLUDE directive has no scope: it is processed immediately. It appeared in Standards Ver‐
sion 3. The optional prefix and suffix appeared in Standards Version 9. The optional namespace
appeared in Standards Version 10.
/META The /META directive specifies a metafield attached to a particular parent field. The field meta‐
data may be of any allowed type except RAW. Metafields are retrieved in exactly the same way as
regular field data, but the field code specified consists of the parent and metafield names joined
with a forward slash:
<parent-field>/<meta-field>
META fields may not be specified before their parent field has been. Syntax is:
/META <parent-field> {field specification line}
The <parent-field> code may not be an alias. As an illustration of this concept,
/META pfield meta CONST FLOAT64 3.291882
provides a scalar metadatum called meta with value 3.291882 attached to the field pfield. This
particular metafield may be referred to by the field code "pfield/meta". Note that different par‐
ent fields may have metafields with the same name, since all references to metafields must include
the parent field name. Metafields may not themselves have further sub-metafields.
As an alternative to the /META directive, starting with Standards Version 7, a metafield may be
specified by a standard field specification line, using
<parent-field>/<meta-field>
as the field name. That is, the above example metafield could have also been specified as:
pfield/meta CONST FLOAT64 3.291882
The /META directive has no scope: it is processed immediately. It appeared in Standards Version
6.
/NAMESPACE
The /NAMESPACE directive changes the current namespaceforsubsequentfieldspecificationlines. Syn‐
tax is:
/NAMESPACE <subspace>
The subspace specified is relative to the current fragment's root namespace. If subspace is the
null-token ("") the current namespace will be set back to the root namespace. Otherwise, the cur‐
rent namespace will be changed to the concatenation of the root namespace with subspace, with the
two parts separated by a dot:
rootspace.subspace
If rootspace is empty, the intervening dot is omitted, and the current namespace is simply sub‐
space.
By default, all field codes, both field names for newly specified fields, and field codes used as
inputs to fields or targets for aliases, are placed in the current namespace, unless they start
with an initial dot, in which case the current namespace is ignored, and they're placed instead in
the fragment's root namespace. See the Namespaces section for further details.
The /NAMESPACE directive has no scope: it is processed immediately. For the effects of changing
the current namespace on included fragments, see the /INCLUDE directive above. The effects of a
/NAMESPACE directive never propagate upwards to parent fragments. It appeared in Standards Ver‐
sion 10.
/PROTECT
The /PROTECT directive specifies the advisory protection level of the current fragment and of the
RAW fields defined therein. The protection level indicates whether writing to the fragment, or
the binary data on disk is permitted. Syntax is:
/PROTECT <level>
Four advisory protection levels are defined:
none No protection at all: data and metadata may be freely changed. This is the default, if no
/PROTECT directive is present.
format The dirfile metadata is protected from change, but RAW data on disk may be modified.
data The RAW data on disk is protected from change, but metadata may be modified.
all Both metadata and data on disk are protected from change.
The /PROTECT directive has fragment scope. It appeared in Standards Version 6.
/REFERENCE
The /REFERENCE directive specifies the name of the field to use as the dirfile's reference field
(see dirfile(5)). If no /REFERENCE directive is specified, the first RAW field encountered is
used as the reference field. The /REFERENCE directive must specify a RAW field. Syntax is:
/REFERENCE <field-code>
The /REFERENCE directive has global scope: if multiple /REFERENCE directives appear in the dirfile
metadata, only the last such is honoured. It appeared in Standards Version 6.
/VERSION
The /VERSION directive specifies the particular version of the Dirfile Standards to which the
dirfile format specification conforms. This directive should occur before any version dependent
syntax is encountered. As of Standards Version 6, no such syntax exists, and this directive is
provided primarily to ease forward compatibility. Syntax is:
/VERSION <integer>
The /VERSION directive has immediate scope: its effect is immediate, and it applies only to meta‐
data below it, including and propagating downwards to sub-fragments after the directive.
In Standards Version 8 and earlier, its effect also propagates upwards back to the parent frag‐
ment, and affects subsequent metadata. Starting with Standards Version 9, this no longer happens.
As a result, a /VERSION directive which indicates a version of 9 or later never propagates up‐
wards; additionally, /VERSION directives found in subfragments included in a Version 9 or later
fragment aren't propagated upwards into that fragment, regardless of the Version of the subfrag‐
ments. The /VERSION directive appeared in Standards Version 5.
FIELD SPECIFICATION LINES
Any line which does not start with a reserved word is assumed to be a field specification line. A field
specification line consists of at least two tokens. The first token is the field name. The second token
is the field type. Subsequent tokens are field parameters. The meaning and number these parameters de‐
pends on the field type specified.
Field Names
The first token in a field specification line is the field name. The field name consists of one or more
characters, excluding both ASCII control characters (the bytes 0x01 through 0x1F), and the characters
& / ; < > | .
which are reserved (but see below for the use of / to specify metafields). The dot (.) is allowed in
Standards Version 5 and earlier. The ampersand, semicolon, less-than sign, greater-than sign, and verti‐
cal line (& ; < > |) are allowed in Standards Version 4 and earlier. Furthermore, due to the lack of an
escape or quoting mechanism (see Tokens above), Standards Version 5 and earlier also prohibit whitespace
and the comment delimiter (#) in field names.
The field name may not be INDEX, which is a special, implicit field which contains the integer frame in‐
dex. Standards Version 5 and earlier also prohibit FILEFRAM, which was an alias for INDEX. Field names
are case sensitive. Standards Version 3 and 4 restrict field names to 50 characters. Standards Version 2
and earlier restrict field names to 16 characters. Additionally, the filesystem may put restrictions on
the length and acceptable characters of a RAW field name, regardless of Standards Version.
Starting in Standards Version 7, if the field name beginning a field specification line contains exactly
one forward slash character (/), the line is assumed to specify a metafield. See the /META directive
above for further details. A field name may not contain more than one forward slash.
Starting in Standards Version 10, any field name may be preceded by a namespace tag. The namespace tag
and the field name are separated by a dot (.). See the Namespaces section, following, for details.
Namespaces
Beginning with Standards Version 10, every field in a Dirfile is contained in a namespace. Every name‐
space is identified by a namespace tag which consist of the same restricted set of characters used for
field names. Namespaces nest arbitrarily deep. Subnamespaces are identified by concatenating all name‐
space tags, separating tags by dots (.), with the outermost namespace leftmost:
topspace.subspace.subsubspace
Each fragment has an immutable root namespace. The root namespace of the primary format file is the null
namespace, identified by the null-token (""). The root namespace of other fragments is specified when
they are introduced (see the /INCLUDE directive). Each fragment also has a current namespace which may
be changed as often as needed using the /NAMESPACE directive, and defaults to the root namespace. The
current namespace is always either the root namespace or else a subspace under the root namespace.
If a field name or field code starts with a leading dot, then that name or code is taken to be relative
to the fragment's root space. If it does not start with a dot, it is taken to be relative to the current
namespace.
For example, if the both the root namespace and current namespace of a fragment start off as rootspace,
then:
aaaa RAW UINT8 1
.bbbb RAW UINT8 1
cccc.dddd RAW UINT8 1
.eeee.ffff RAW UINT8 1
/NAMESPACE newspace
gggg RAW UINT8 1
.hhhh RAW UINT8 1
iiii.jjjj RAW UINT8 1
.kkkk.llll RAW UINT8 1
specifies, respectively, the fields:
rootspace.aaaa,
rootspace.bbbb,
rootspace.cccc.dddd,
rootspace.eeee.ffff,
rootspace.newspace.gggg,
rootspace.hhhh,
rootspace.newspace.iiii.jjjj, and
rootspace.kkkk.llll.
Note that a field may specify deeper subspaces under either the root namespace or the current namespace
(meaning it is never necessary to use the /NAMESPACE directive). Note also that there is no way for meta‐
data in a given fragment to refer to fields outside the fragment's root space.
There is one exception to this namespace scoping rule: the implicit INDEX vector is always in the null
(top-level) namespace, and namespace tags specified with it, either explicitly or implicitly, even a
fragment root namespace, are ignored. So, in a fragment with root namespace rootspace, and current name‐
space rootspace.subspace,
INDEX,
.INDEX,
namespace.INDEX, and
.namespace.INDEX,
all refer to the same INDEX field.
Field Types
There are eighteen field types. Of these, fourteen are of vector type (BIT, DIVIDE, INDIR, LINCOM, LIN‐
TERP, MPLEX, MULTIPLY, PHASE, POLYNOM, RAW, RECIP, SBIT, SINDIR, and WINDOW) and four are of scalar type
(CARRAY, CONST, SARRAY, and STRING). The thirteen vector field types other than RAW fields are also
called derived fields, since they derive their value from one or more input vector fields. Any other
vector field may be used as an input vector, including the implicit INDEX field, but excluding SINDIR
string vectors.
Five of these derived fields (DIVIDE, LINCOM, MPLEX, MULTIPLY, and WINDOW) have more than one vector in‐
put field. In situations where these input fields have differing sample rates, the sample rate of the
derived field is the same as the sample rate of the first (left-most) input field specified. Further‐
more, the input fields are synchronised by aligning them on frame boundaries, assuming equally-spaced
sampling throughout a frame, and using the last sample of each input field which did not occur after the
sample of the derived field being computed. That is, if the first and second input fields have sample
rates s1 and s2, the derived field also has sample rate s1 and, for every sample of the derived field, n,
the n'th sample of the first field is used (since they have the same sample rate by definition), and the
sample number used of the second field, m, is computed as:
m = floor((n * s2) / s1).
Starting in Standards Version 6, certain scalar field parameters in the field specifications may be spec‐
ified using CONST or CARRAY fields, instead of literal values. A list of parameters for which this is
allowed is given below in the Field Parameters section.
The possible fields types are:
BIT The BIT vector field type extracts one or more bits out of an input vector field as an unsigned
number. Syntax is:
<fieldname> BIT <input> <first-bit> [<num-bits>]
which specifies fieldname to be num-bits bits extracted from the input vector field input starting
with bit number first-bit (counting from the least-significant bit, which is numbered zero), after
input has been converted from its native type to an (endianness corrected) unsigned 64-bit inte‐
ger. If num-bits is omitted, it is assumed to be one.
The extracted bits are interpreted as an unsigned integer; the SBIT field type is a signed version
of this field type. The optional num-bits parameter appeared in Standards Version 1.
CARRAY The CARRAY scalar field type is a list of constants fully specified in the format specification
metadata. Syntax is:
<fieldname> CARRAY <type> <value0> <value1> <value2> ...
where type may be any supported native data type (see the description of the RAW field type be‐
low), and value0, value1, &c. are the values of successive elements in the scalar list interpreted
as indicated by type. No limit is placed on the number of elements in a CARRAY. (Note: despite
being multivalued, this is not considered a vector field since the elements of the CARRAY are not
indexed by frames.) CARRAY appeared in Standards Version 8.
CONST The CONST scalar field type is a constant fully specified in the format specification metadata.
Syntax is:
<fieldname> CONST <type> <value>
where type may be any supported native data type (see the description of the RAW field type be‐
low), and value is the numerical value of the constant interpreted as indicated by type. CONST
appeared in Standards Version 6.
DIVIDE The DIVIDE vector field type is the quotient of two vector fields. Syntax is:
<fieldname> DIVIDE <field1> <field1>
The derived field is computed as:
fieldname = field1 / field2.
It was introduced in Standards Version 8.
INDIR The INDIR vector field type performs an indirect translation of a CARRAY scalar field to a derived
vector field based on a vector index field. Syntax is:
<fieldname> INDIR <index> <array>
where index is the vector field, which is converted to an integer type, if necessary, and array is
the CARRAY field. The nth sample of the INDIR field is the value of the mth element of array
(counting from zero), where m is the value of the nth sample of index. When index is not a valid
element number of array, the corresponding value of the INDIR is implementation dependent. INDIR
appeared in Standards Version 10.
LINCOM The LINCOM vector field type is the linear combination of one, two or three input vector fields.
Syntax is:
<fieldname> LINCOM [<n>] <field1> <a1> <b1> [<field2> <a2> <b2> [<field3> <a3> <b3>]]
where n, if present, indicates the number of input vector fields (1, 2, or 3). The derived field
is computed as:
fieldname = (a1 * field1 + b1) + (a2 * field2 + b2) + (a3 * field3 + b3)
with the field2 and field3 terms included only if specified.
If n is not specified, the number of fields is determined by looking at the supplied parameters.
Since it is possible to create a field code which is identical to a literal number, the third to‐
ken on the line is assumed to be n if it the entire token can be parsed as a literal number using
the rules outlined in strtod(3). That is, if the field code specifying field1 could be mistaken
for a literal number, n must be specified to prevent ambiguity. In standards Version 6 and earli‐
er, n is mandatory.
LINTERP
The LINTERP vector field type specifies a table look up based on another vector field. Syntax is:
<fieldname> LINTERP <input> <table>
where input is the input vector field for the table lookup, and table is the path to the lookup
table file for the field. If this path is relative, it is assumed to be relative to the directory
containing the fragment defining this field. The lookup table file is an ASCII text file with two
whitespace separated columns of x and y values. Values are linearly interpolated between the
points specified in the lookup table.
MPLEX The MPLEX vector field type permits the multiplexing of several low sample rate fields into a sin‐
gle data field of higher sample rate. Syntax is:
<fieldname> MPLEX <input> <index> <count> [<period>]
where input is the input vector containing the multiplexed fields, index is the vector containing
the mutliplex index, count is the value of the multiplex index when the computed field is stored
in input, and period, if present and non-zero, is the number of samples between successive occur‐
rances of the value count in the index vector. A period of zero (or, equivalently, it's omission)
indicates that either the value count is not equally spaced in the index vector, or else that the
spacing is unknown. Both count and period are integers, and period may not be negative.
At every sample n, the derived field is computed as:
fieldname[n] = (index == count) ? input[n] : fieldname[n - 1]
The index vector is converted to an integer type for comparison. The value of the derived field
before the first sample where index equals count is implementation dependent.
The values of count and period place no restrictions on values contained in index. Specifically,
particular values of index (including count) need not be equally spaced (neither by period nor any
other spacing); index need not ever take on the value count (in which case the value of the en‐
tirety of the derived field is implementation dependent). Different MPLEX field definitions which
use the same index vector may specify different periods. MPLEX appeared in Standards Version 9.
MULTIPLY
The MULTIPLY vector field type is the product of two vector fields. Syntax is:
<fieldname> MULTIPLY <field1> <field2>
The derived field is computed as:
fieldname = field1 * field2.
MULTIPLY appeared in Standards Version 2.
PHASE The PHASE vector field type shifts an input vector field by the specified number of samples. Syn‐
tax is:
<fieldname> PHASE <input> <shift>
which specifies fieldname to be the input vector field, input, shifted by shift samples. A posi‐
tive shift indicates a forward shift, towards the end-of-field. Results of shifting past the be‐
ginning- or end-of-field is implementation dependent. PHASE appeared in Standards Version 4.
POLYNOM
The POLYNOM vector field type specifies a polynomial function of a single input vector field.
Syntax is:
<field_name> POLYNOM <input> <a0> <a1> [<a2> [<a3> [<a4> [<a5>]]]]
where <input> is the input field code, and the order of the computed polynomial is determined by
how many co-efficients are present in the specification. The derived field is computed as:
fieldname = a0 + a1 * input + a2 * input**2 + a3 * input**3 + a4 * input**4 + a5 * input**5
where ** is the element-wise exponentiation operator, and the higher order terms are computed only
if the corresponding co-efficients ai are specified. POLYNOM appeared in Standards Version 7.
RAW The RAW vector field type specifies raw time streams on disk. In this case, the field name should
correspond to the name of the file containing the time stream. Syntax is:
<fieldname> RAW <type> <sample-rate>
where sample-rate is the number of samples per dirfile frame for the time stream and type is a to‐
ken specifying the native data type:
UINT8 unsigned 8-bit integer
INT8 two's complement signed 8-bit integer
UINT16 unsigned 16-bit integer
INT16 two's complement signed 16-bit integer
UINT32 unsigned 32-bit integer
INT32 two's complement signed 32-bit integer
UINT64 unsigned 64-bit integer
INT64 two's complement signed 64-bit integer
FLOAT32
IEEE-754 standard 32-bit single precision floating point number
FLOAT64
IEEE-754 standard 64-bit double precision floating point number
COMPLEX64
a 64-bit complex number consisting of two IEEE-754 standard 32-bit single precision
floating point numbers representing the real and imaginary parts of the complex num‐
ber (Standards Version 7 and later)
COMPLEX128
a 128-bit complex number consisting of two IEEE-754 standard 64-bit double precision
floating point numbers representing the real and imaginary parts of the complex num‐
ber (Standards Version 7 and later).
For more information on the storage of complex valued data, see dirfile(5). Two additional type
names exist: FLOAT is equivalent to FLOAT32, and DOUBLE is equivalent to FLOAT64. Standards Ver‐
sion 9 deprecates these two aliases, but still allows them.
All these type names (except those for complex data, which came later) were introduced in Stan‐
dards Version 5. Earlier Standards Versions specified data types with single-character type
aliases:
c UINT8
u UINT16
s INT16
U UINT32
i, S INT32
f FLOAT32
d FLOAT64
Types INT8, UINT64, INT64, COMPLEX64, and COMPLEX128 are not supported before Standards Version 5,
so no single-character type aliases exist for these types. These single-character type aliases
were deprecated in Standards Version 5 and removed in Standards Version 8.
RECIP The RECIP vector field type computes the reciprocal of a single input vector field. Syntax is:
<field_name> RECIP <input> <dividend>
where <input> is the input field code and <dividend> is a scalar quantity. The derived field is
computed as:
fieldname = dividend / input.
RECIP appeared in Standards Version 8.
SARRAY The SARRAY scalar field type is a list of strings fully specified in the format file metadata.
Syntax is:
<fieldname> SARRAY <string0> <string1> <string2> ...
Each string is a single token. To include whitespace in a string, enclose it in quotation marks
("), or else escape the whitespace with the backslash character (\). No limit is placed on the
number of elements in a SARRAY. SARRAY appeared in Standards Version 10.
SBIT The SBIT vector field type extracts one or more bits out of an input vector field as a (two's-com‐
plement) signed number. Syntax is:
<fieldname> SBIT <input> <first-bit> [<num-bits>]
which specifies fieldname to be num-bits bits extracted from the input vector field input starting
with bit number first-bit (counting from the least-significant bit, which is numbered zero), after
input has been converted from its native type to an (endianness corrected) two's complement signed
64-bit integer. If num-bits is omitted, it is assumed to be one.
The extracted bits are interpreted as a two's complement signed integer of the specified width.
(So, if num-bits is, for example, one, then the field can take on the value zero or negative one.)
The BIT field type is an unsigned version of this field type. SBIT appeared in Standards Version
7.
SINDIR The SINDIR vector field type performs an indirect translation of a SARRAY scalar field to a de‐
rived vector field of strings based on a vector index field. Syntax is:
<fieldname> SINDIR <index> <array>
where index is the vector field, which is converted to an integer type, if necessary, and array is
the SARRAY field. The nth sample of the SINDIR field is the string value of the mth element of
array (counting from zero), where m is the value of the nth sample of index. When index is not a
valid element number of array, the corresponding value of the SINDIR is implementation dependent.
SINDIR appeared in Standards Version 10.
STRING The STRING scalar field type is a character string fully specified in the format file metadata.
Syntax is:
<fieldname> STRING <string>
where string is the string value of the field. Note that string is a single token. To include
whitespace in the string, enclose string in quotation marks ("), or else escape the whitespace
with the backslash character (\). STRING appeared in Standards Version 6.
WINDOW The WINDOW vector field type isolates a portion of an input vector based on a comparison. Syntax
is:
<fieldname> WINDOW <input> <check> <op> <threshold>
where input is the vector containing the data to extract, check is the vector on which to test the
comparison, threshold is the value against which check is compared, and op is one of the following
tokens indicating the particular comparison performed:
EQ data are extracted where check, converted to a 64-bit signed integer, equals thresh‐
old,
GE data are extracted where check, converted to a 64-bit floating-point number, is
greater than or equal to threshold,
GT data are extracted where check, converted to a 64-bit floating-point number, is
strictly greater than threshold,
LE data are extracted where check, converted to a 64-bit floating-point number, is less
than or equal to threshold,
LT data are extracted where check, converted to a 64-bit floating-point number, is
strictly less than threshold,
NE data are extracted where check, converted to a 64-bit signed integer, is not equal
to threshold,
SET data are extracted where at least one bit set in threshold is also set in check,
when converted to a 64-bit unsigned integer,
CLR data are extracted where at least one bit set in threshold is not set in check, when
converted to a 64-bit unsigned integer,
The storage type of threshold depends on the operator, and follows the interpretation of check.
It may never be complex valued.
Outside the region extracted, the value of the derived field is implementation dependent.
Note: with the EQ operator, this derived field type is very similar to the MPLEX field type above.
The primary difference is that MPLEX mandates the value of the derived field outside the extracted
region, while WINDOW does not. WINDOW appeared in Standards Version 9.
Field Parameters
All input vector field parameters should be field codes (see below). Additionally, the scalar field pa‐
rameters listed may be either literal numbers or else the field code of a CONST field containing the val‐
ue, or the field code of a CARRAY followed by a left angle bracket (<), then an non-negative integer used
as the CARRAY element index, then a right angle bracket (>), that is:
fieldcode<n>
If the angle brackets and element index are omitted from a CARRAY field code used as a parameter, the
first element in the field (index zero) is assumed.
Field parameters which may be specified using a scalar field code are:
BIT, SBIT
bitnum, numbits
LINCOM any of the mi, or bi
MPLEX count, max
PHASE shift
POLYNOM
any of the ai
RAW spf
RECIP dividend
WINDOW threshold
Since it is possible to create a field code which is identical to a literal number, a parameter is as‐
sumed to be the field code of a scalar field only if the entire token cannot be parsed as a literal num‐
ber using the rules outlined in strtod(3). For example, a CONST field whose field code consists solely
of digits can never be used as a parameter in a field specification line.
Starting in Standards Version 7, literal complex number is specified as two real (floating point) numbers
separated by a semicolon (;) with no intervening whitespace. So, for example, the tokens
1;0 0;1 4;0 0;5 9.313e2;74.1
represent, respectively, the real unit, the imaginary unit, the real number four, the imaginary number
5i, and the complex number 931.3 + 74.1i. Because the semicolon character cannot be used in field names,
a complex valued literal can never be mistaken for a field code. This allows, among other things, the
composition of complex valued fields from purely real input fields. For example, a complex valued field,
z, may be created from a real valued field re, representing the real part of the complex number, and the
real valued field im, representing the imaginary part of the complex number, with the following LINCOM
specification:
z LINCOM re 1 0 im 0;1 0
Starting in Standards Version 9, in additional to decimal notation, literal integer parameters may be
specified as hexadecimal numbers, by prefixing the number (after an optional '+' or '-' sign) with 0x or
0X, or as octal numbers, by prefixing the number with 0, as described in strtol(3). Similarly, floating
point literal numbers (both purely real ones and components of complex literals) may be specified in
hexadecimal by prefixing them with 0x or 0X, and using p or P as the binary exponent prefix, as described
in the C99 standard. Both uppercase and lowercase hexadecimal digits may be used. In cases where a lit‐
eral floating point number may apear, the tokens INF or INFINITY, optionally preceded by a '+' or '-'
sign, and NAN, optionally immediately followed by '(', then a sequence of characters, then ')', and all
disregarding case, will be interpreted as the special floating point values explained in strtod(3).
Field Codes
When specifying the input to a field, either as a scalar parameter, or as an input vector field to a non-
RAW vector field, field codes are used. A field code consists of, in order:
• (since Standards Version 10:) optonally, a leading dot (.), indicating this field code is relative to
the fragment's root namespace. Without the leading dot, the field code is taken to be relative to
the current namespace. (See the discussion in the Namespaces section above for details.)
• (since Standards Version 10:) optionally, a non-null subnamespace followed by a dot (.) indicating a
subspace under the current or root namespace. The subnamespace may be made up of any number of name‐
space tags separated by dots, to nest deeper in the namespace tree.
• (since Standards Version 6:) if the field in question is a metafield (see the /META directive above),
the field name of the metafield's parent (which may be an alias) followed by a forward slash (/).
• a simple field name, possibly an alias, indicating a vector or scalar field
• (since Standards Version 7:) optionally, a dot (.) followed by a representation suffix.
A representation suffix may be used used to extract a real number from a complex value. The available
suffixes (listed here with their preceding dot) and their meanings are:
.a the argument of the input, that is, the angle (in radians) between the positive real axis and the
input. The argument is in the range [-pi, pi], and a branch cut exists along the negative real
axis. At the branch cut, -pi is returned if the imaginary part is -0, and pi is returned if the
imaginary part is +0. If the input is zero, zero is returned.
.i the imaginary part of the input (i.e. the projection of the input onto the imaginary axis)
.m the modulus of the input (i.e. its absolue value).
.r the real part of the input (i.e. the projection of the input onto the real axis)
.z (since Standards Version 10:) the identity representation: it returns the full complex value,
equivalent to simply omitting the suffix completely. It is only needed in certain cases to force
the correct interpretation of a field code in the presence of a namespace tag. To wit, the field
code
name.r
may be interpreted as the real-part (via the .r representation suffix) of the field called name.
(if such a field exists). To refer to a field called r in the name namespace, the field code must
be written:
name.r.z
NB: The first interpretation only occurs with valid representation suffixes; the field code:
name.q
is interpreted as the field q in the name namespace because .q is not a valid representation suf‐
fix. Furthermore, ambiguity arises only if both fields "name" and "name.r" are defined. if the
field "name" does not exist, but the field "name.r" does, then the original field code is not am‐
biguous. This is the only representation suffix allowed on SARRAY, SINDIR, and STRING field
codes.
If the specified field is purely real, representations are calculated as if the imaginary part were equal
to +0.
HISTORY
This document describes Versions 10 and earlier of the Dirfile Standards.
Version 10 of the Standards (January 2017) added the INDIR, SARRAY, and SINDIR field types, namespaces,
the /NAMESPACE directive, the flac encoding scheme, and the .z representation suffix.
Version 9 of the Standards (April 2012) added the MPLEX and WINDOW field types, the /ALIAS and /HIDDEN
directives, the affixes to /INCLUDE, the sie, zzip, and zzslim encoding schemes, along with the optional
enc_datum token to /ENCODING. It permitted specification of integer literals in octal and hexadecimal.
Finally, it deprecated the type aliases FLOAT and DOUBLE.
Version 8 of the Standards (November 2010) added the DIVIDE, RECIP, and CARRAY field types, made the for‐
ward slash on reserved words mandatory, and prohibited using the single-character type aliases in the
specification of RAW fields. It also introduced the optional second (arm) token to the /ENDIAN direc‐
tive.
Version 7 of the Standards (October 2009) added the SBIT and POLYNOM field types, and the directive-less
method of specifying metafields. It also introduced the data types COMPLEX128 and COMPLEX64, along with
the notion of representations, and the lzma encoding scheme. Finally, it made the number of fields para‐
meter for LINCOM optional.
Version 6 of the Standards (October 2008) added the /ENCODING, /META, /PROTECT, and /REFERENCE direc‐
tives, and the CONST and STRING field types. It permitted whitespace in tokens and introduced the char‐
acter escape sequences. It allowed CONST fields to be used as parameters in field specification lines.
It also removed FILEFRAM as an alias for INDEX, and prohibited . but allowed # and \ in field names.
Version 5 of the Standards (August 2008) added VERSION and ENDIAN, slash demarcation of reserved words,
and removed the restriction on field name length. It introduced the data types INT8, INT64, and UINT64,
the new-style type specifiers, and increased the range of the BIT field type from 32 to 64 bits. It also
prohibited the characters &;<>\| in field names.
Version 4 of the Standards (October 2006) added the PHASE field type.
Version 3 of the Standards (January 2006) added INCLUDE and increased the allowed length of a field name
from 16 to 50 characters.
Version 2 of the Standards (September 2005) added the MULTIPLY field type.
Version 1 of the Standards (November 2004) added FRAMEOFFSET and the optional fourth argument to the BIT
field type.
Version 0 of the Standards (before March 2003) refers to the dirfile standards supported by the getda‐
ta(3) library originally introduced into the kst(1) sources, which contained support for all other fea‐
tures covered by this document.
AUTHORS
The dirfile specification was developed by C. B. Netterfield <netterfield@astro.utoronto.ca>.
Since Standards Version 3, the dirfile specification has been maintained by D. V. Wiebe
<getdata@ketiltrout.net>.
SEE ALSO
dirfile(5), dirfile-encoding(5)
Standards Version 10 19 January 2017 dirfile-format(5)