Editing Guide to madagascar programs (section)

==sfin==
{| class="wikitable" align="center" cellspacing="0" border="1"
! colspan="4" style="background:#ffdead;" | Display basic information about RSF files.
|-
! colspan="4" | sfin info=y check=2. trail=y [<file0.rsf] file1.rsf file2.rsf ...
|-
|  colspan="4" | n1,n2,... are data dimensions<br>o1,o2,... are axis origins<br>d1,d2,... are axis sampling intervals<br>label1,label2,... are axis labels<br>unit1,unit2,... are axis units
|-
| ''float  '' || '''check=2.''' ||   || 	Portion of the data (in Mb) to check for zero values.
|-
| ''bool   '' || '''info=y''' ||  [y/n] || 	If n, only display the name of the data file.
|-
| ''bool   '' || '''trail=y''' ||  [y/n] || 	If n, skip trailing dimensions of  one
|}


<tt>sfin</tt> is one of the most useful programs for operating with
RSF files. It produces quick information on the file hypercube
dimensions and checks the consistency of the associated data file.
Here is an example. Let us create an RSF file and examine it with <tt>sfin</tt>.
<pre>
bash$ sfspike n1=100 n2=20 > spike.rsf
bash$ sfin spike.rsf
spike.rsf:
    in="/tmp/spike.rsf@"
    esize=4 type=float form=native
    n1=100         d1=0.004       o1=0          label1="Time" unit1="s"
    n2=20          d2=0.1         o2=0          label2="Distance" unit2="km"
        2000 elements 8000 bytes
</pre>
<tt>sfin</tt> reports the following information:
  
*location of the data file (<tt>/tmp/spike.rsf\@</tt>) 
*element size (4 bytes) 
*element type (floating point) 
*element form (native) 
*hypercube dimensions (100 by 20) 
*axes scale (0.004 and 0.1) 
*axes origin (0 and 0) 
*axes labels 
*axes units 
*total number of elements 
*total number of bytes in the data file 
Suppose that the file got corrupted by a buggy program and reports
incorrect dimensions. The <tt>sfin</tt> program should be able to
catch the discrepancy.
<pre>
bash$ echo n2=100 >> spike.rsf
bash$ sfin spike.rsf > /dev/null
sfin:           Actually 8000 bytes, 20% of expected.
</pre>
<tt>sfin</tt> also checks the first records in the file for zeros. 
<pre>
bash$ sfspike n1=100 n2=100 k2=99 > spike2.rsf
bash$ sfin spike2.rsf >/dev/null
sfin: The first 32768 bytes are all zeros
</pre>
The number of bytes to check is adjustable
<pre>
bash$ sfin spike2.rsf check=0.01 >/dev/null
sfin: The first 16384 bytes are all zeros
</pre>
You can also output only the location of the data file. This is
sometimes handy in scripts.
<pre>
bash$ sfin spike.rsf spike2.rsf info=n
/tmp/spike.rsf@ /tmp/spike2.rsf@
</pre>
An alternative is to use <tt>sfget</tt>, as follows:
<pre>
bash$ sfget parform=n in < spike.rsf
/tmp/spike.rsf@
</pre>
To actually eliminate annoying trailing dimensions of length one (not just stop displaying them with <tt>trail=n</tt>), you may use <tt>sed</tt>. Example for eliminating axis 6:
<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">
sed -i 's/n6=1//g' file.rsf
</syntaxhighlight>