[Ifeffit] Handling time resolved data

[Bruce Ravel]

On 12/13/2013 09:00 AM, Ditty Dixon wrote:
> Dear Bruce,
>
> Recenetly we  did some time resolved measurements, QEXAFS mode. While
> the old Athena arranged the file as we want i.e file 1, 2, 3 etc, the
> new did it bit different 1, 11 12  and again 2, 21 etc. Screenshot
> attached. Why is it doing diffrently for the two version? Can it be
> fixed some how.

You haven't explained exactly where these data come from, so I am 
assuming that each scan was written to its own file and these files were 
imported into Athena.

In Athena, data are imported in "ascii-betical" order, that is, sorted 
in order of characters in the ASCII chart:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#ASCII_printable_characters

In that sense, Athena sorted your data as expected.  As Chris pointed 
out, if you want things like

    nr_1.spec
    nr_2.spec
    ...
    nr_10.spec

to sort numerically by the number between the _ and the .spec, you need 
to format the them so that numerical and ascii-ordered sorting come out 
the same.  This is done as

    nr_01.spec
    nr_02.spec
    ...
    nr_10.spec

For a quick exafs experiment, two digits is probably not enough, so 
you'd want something like

    nr_00001.spec
    nr_00002.spec
    ...
    nr_00010.spec


I don't recall quite how the sorting worked in the old version of Athena 
(it has been over 5 years since I stopped working on it), but my vague 
memory is that, on Windows, they were imported in the order that they 
were clicked upon the file selection dialog.  The way it is currently 
done is much better in that it is reproducible.





-- 
  Bruce Ravel  ------------------------------------ bravel at bnl.gov

  National Institute of Standards and Technology
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