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NeXtMidas Training
Common Midas Concepts
Data Types
Data Formats
Elements
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- Elements
- Remember, an element type is specified using a two-character digraph.
- The first character is the mode (S,C,V,...).
- The second character is the type (D,F,L,...).
- There are also two special digraphs NH (Non-Homogeneous)
and KW (KeyWords).
- These are used to indicate the absence of an elemental type.
- While rarely used, they will appear in documentation and in some classes of
Midas Blue File.
- Examples:
- SL (Scalar Long)
- A single 32-bit long integer.
- CF (Complex Float)
- Two single-precision floating point numbers.
- Likely a complex (Real,Imag) number.
- VD (Vector Double)
- Three double-precision floating point numbers.
- Likely a geodetic position (Lat,Lon,Alt) or (Alt,Lat,Lon).
- 4A (4 Ascii)
- Four adjacent blocks of 8 ASCII characters.
- This represents a string of up to 32 (4*8) characters.
- Most frameworks automatically trim off trailing spaces from an ASCII string.
- Less Common Examples:
- 2F (Two Float)
- Same meaning as CF, but rarely used.
- Most users avoid using the generic multipliers with numeric types.
- CA (Complex Ascii)
- Same meaning as 2A, but rarely used.
- Usually the generic multipliers are used when working with ASCII values.
Java Experts Take Note: |
The ASCII strings are stored as Fortran strings. A Fortran string is a fixed size array
of 8-bit ASCII characters that is padded with spaces to fit the alloted size. This
differs from C strings which are null-terminated and Java strings which are
variable-sized and use 16-bit UNICODE characters. |
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