Time Series Requirements

OLAF Requirements for Time Series

• Data must be in standard ASCII (with no ASCII extension characters).
• Filenames are limited to 30 characters including the extension, which must be .tab. Filenames cannot be mixed-case. (OLAF will convert to lower case.)
• No Tab characters are allowed.
• You may have either two or three columns: time, quantity measured, and optionally a column for uncertainty/error.
• Julian dates are greatly preferred over modified julian dates.
• Columns must be delimited by a single space. (Spaces included in the format definition for the columns don't count.)
• Each line must be the same number of bytes long, and each column within the line must have the same width (in bytes) for each row. Spaces should be used to pad the columns and rows to this requirement.
• Decimal numbers must be aligned on the decimal point.
• Integers must be right-aligned.
• No blank lines may exist in the file.
• Columns may not have blank entries. Entries for which there is no data are to be filled with a "null value" such as - for character fields, 0 for integer fields, or -999.99999 (chosen to match the format of the field) for real fields. Choose a null value which is outside the range of valid values for the field.