Save Trace as .DAT Data File

Controls: File Menu >> Save DAT
Macro: SaveDAT

This option saves raw binary data to headerless .DAT files. It saves the data from the current display to a single-screen file, which contains data for 1024 samples per channel. All active channels will be saved, even if they are not currently displayed. Data will always be saved in signed 16-bit format.

Because they are headerless, .DAT files contain no clues about their data format or number of channels. They can only be interpreted by programs that know what to expect. For example, if you want to open one of these files in Daqarta, you will be prompted for all the relevant information... which you may not recall days or months after the file was saved. Thus, this option is best reserved for saving data that must be compatible with older or custom software that uses this format in a standard way.

This option is disabled when the current display shows averaged data, which uses a 64-bit format that Daqarta only supports with .DQA files.

It is also disabled during DDisk recording, or when there are no active Input or Output (Generator) channels.

Files may be saved with up to four channels of data (Left and Right Input plus Left and Right Output).

You can not save Spectrogram or Pitch Track (Sgram/PT) data to a .DAT file using this option. If you try that, the saved file will be the waveform data used for the most recent spectrum computation. If you want to save a complete spectrogram or pitch track, you will need to use DDisk mode and save the raw waveform data, then display it in Sgram or Pitch Track mode when you later open it.

Macro Notes:

The SaveDAT macro has no effect if any File Open or Save As dialog is already active.

SaveDAT= without a name will open the Save As dialog showing all .DAT files, with the default set to Data or the most recent name.

SaveDAT="MyFile" will open the Save As dialog with the default name set to MyFile. (Note that quotes are needed around all filenames in macros.) If you accept this by hitting Enter or the Save button in that dialog, Daqarta will assume you want to save a file named MyFile.DAT. If that file already exists, you will be prompted to replace it.

After either of the above commands, you may use IF.Posn?f=0 to see if the user has hit Cancel instead of choosing a file name. This allows your macro to exit gracefully or take other action.

A.SaveDAT="MyFile" will save MyFile.DAT directly, without any Save As dialog. Note that if the file already exists, it will be overwritten without any confirmation prompt.

SaveDAT can use string variables and expressions. For example, SaveDAT=Field1 will use the contents of Field1 as the default file name, and A.SaveDAT=Field1 will save a file with that name directly.

Similarly, if the Macro Variable Var0 holds a value of 12, then SaveDAT="Test"+Var0 will set a default file name of Test12. If you expect to use a large series of files, you can use SaveDAT="Test"+Var0(3) (for example) to set the decimal format to 3 integer places to get Test012. This will allow proper sorting by file name.

A.SaveDAT= will save directly using the current default file name. If you have previously set file names to Auto-Increment, either manually or using AutoInc=1, then this will save using the next file name (MyFile-001.DAT, MyFile-002.DAT, etc).

See Macro Variables for a way to use a Field to supply the initial name that AutoInc starts with.