Grid-oriented Text Data

Organizing tables of data with the aid of a spreadsheet or simple data base is a common technique. One way to transfer this data into AVS/Express is to export the table as a text file. Sometimes these files can be though of as a two dimensional grid of data. Use grid-oriented text reader when you have numeric data, all of the same datatype (i.e. int, real). Labels are allowed on the top row and/or left column of the grid, but otherwise the data must be numerical. The user interface is simpler and easier to use than the interface for the column-oriented reader, but you do not have the ability to customize the treatment of the individual columns.

When you use the wizard to select this reader, the grid reader will be created and its user interface panel will appear in the Module Editor section of the application window. The reader's user interface asks you several question about your file in order to choose the correct reader and settings.

The skip lines asks how many lines to skip at the beginning. Sometimes files will have information at the beginning of the file which is not data. This asks how many lines to skip before it reaches the actual data.

The column separator space asks you how the file is delimited. In the case shown above the data is separated by tabs. Some of the options of column separator include space, tab, colon, comma or other. If you choose this option you will be able to enter the separator in the box below.

You can choose to have AVS/Express figure out what the data type of your file is, or you can specify it. Click on the Read File button to have your file read in.

For more information please see the Read_Text_Grid reference page.