Guide to RSF format

Header and Data files

A simple way to check the layout of an RSF file is with the sfin program.

bash$ sfin sin10.rsf
sin10.rsf:
    in="/tmp/sin.rsf@"
    esize=4 type=float form=native
    n1=50          d1=1           o1=0
    n2=20          d2=?           o2=?
        1000 elements 4000 bytes

The program reports the following information: the location of the data file (/tmp/sin.rsf), the element size (4 bytes), the element type (floating point), the element form (native), the hypercube dimensions ($50 \times 20$), axis scaling (1 and unspecified), and axis origin (0 and unspecified). It also checks the total number of elements and bytes in the data file.

Let us examine this information in detail. First, we can verify that the data file exists and contains the specified number of bytes:

bash$ ls -l /tmp/sin.rsf@
-rw-r--r--  1 sergey users 4000 2004-10-04 00:35 /tmp/sin.rsf@

4000 bytes in this file are required to store $50 \times 20$ floating-point 4-byte numbers in a binary form. Thus, the data file contains nothing but the raw data in a contiguous binary form.