printfm with character data

I am very rusty using GAUSS, with a break of several years....

I have a mixed character/numeric matrix like the example shown below, that I am reading in from .xls. The identifier  text in the first two cols has 9 characters

TAMA00491  TAMA01291 67 185 0.51 1 0.51 0.51 1 249
TAMA00572  TAMA01112 85 154 0.69 1 0.69 0.69 1 248
TAMA00143  TAMA00363 17 52 0.53 1 0.53 0.53 1 249
TAMA00334  TAMA00364 48 52 0.53 1 0.53 0.53 1 249

However if I use printfm to print it, the text is truncated to 8 digits, no matter what settings in use in the mask and fmt statements (as shown below).

How do I get it to print the identifier texts correctly without truncating to 8 characters?

Thanks, Mike

let mask[1,10] = 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1;
let fmt[10,3] =
    "-*.*s" 10 10
    "-*.*s" 10 10
    "-*.*lf" 5 0
    "-*.*lf" 5 0
    "-*.*lf" 6 2
    "-*.*lf" 6 2
    "-*.*lf" 6 2
    "-*.*lf" 6 2
    "-*.*lf" 6 2
    "-*.*lf" 3 0;
d3 = printfm(ddata,mask,fmt);

3 Answers



0



If you want the text to be of arbitrary length, you need to read it in as a string array. You can do this with either xlsReadSA or spreadSheetReadSA.

Once you have the text data as a string array, you can print everything by converting the numerical data to a string array and using string concatenation. It is simpler than it sounds! Here is a little example. I will just create the string array rather than reading it in from an XLS file for the sake of the example:

//create sample string array
string vnames = { "TAMA00491" "TAMA01291", 
                  "TAMA00572" "TAMA01112" };

//sample data
x = rndn(2, 3);

//$~ performs string concatenation
//ntos performs conversion of numbers to a string array
print vnames $~ ntos(x);


0



Thanks for the answer: I tried to simplify the question, and introduced some confusion.... In fact I am not reading in the matrix ás is' from excel, but it is being constructed through different analyses. Because of that, I cannot have a work-around solution by reading in the original data as a string. (Another possible  work-around would be to ensure the identifiers have  a max of 8 characters).

I really do want to understand the printfm command, as I use it for other things as well, and it doesnt seem to be working in the way it is described in the GAUSS documentation.

Thanks

Mike



0



Hello Mike,

In the remarks section of the documentation for printfm, it says "If the corresponding element of mask is 0, then that element of x is printed as a character string of up to 8 characters."

The reason that you can only print 8 characters is because you are storing the text as an element of a matrix. Each element of a matrix is a 64-bit double precision floating point number. To store one character, you need 8 bits (1 byte). Therefore, each matrix element has only enough room to store 8 characters.

If you really want to keep the text inside of the matrix, then you must limit it to 8 characters. You certainly can create your text elements to be longer than 8 characters by placing them in a string array. You can create this string array during your other calculations just as you did when you added them to your matrix.

aptech

1,773

Your Answer

3 Answers

0

If you want the text to be of arbitrary length, you need to read it in as a string array. You can do this with either xlsReadSA or spreadSheetReadSA.

Once you have the text data as a string array, you can print everything by converting the numerical data to a string array and using string concatenation. It is simpler than it sounds! Here is a little example. I will just create the string array rather than reading it in from an XLS file for the sake of the example:

//create sample string array
string vnames = { "TAMA00491" "TAMA01291", 
                  "TAMA00572" "TAMA01112" };

//sample data
x = rndn(2, 3);

//$~ performs string concatenation
//ntos performs conversion of numbers to a string array
print vnames $~ ntos(x);
0

Thanks for the answer: I tried to simplify the question, and introduced some confusion.... In fact I am not reading in the matrix ás is' from excel, but it is being constructed through different analyses. Because of that, I cannot have a work-around solution by reading in the original data as a string. (Another possible  work-around would be to ensure the identifiers have  a max of 8 characters).

I really do want to understand the printfm command, as I use it for other things as well, and it doesnt seem to be working in the way it is described in the GAUSS documentation.

Thanks

Mike

0

Hello Mike,

In the remarks section of the documentation for printfm, it says "If the corresponding element of mask is 0, then that element of x is printed as a character string of up to 8 characters."

The reason that you can only print 8 characters is because you are storing the text as an element of a matrix. Each element of a matrix is a 64-bit double precision floating point number. To store one character, you need 8 bits (1 byte). Therefore, each matrix element has only enough room to store 8 characters.

If you really want to keep the text inside of the matrix, then you must limit it to 8 characters. You certainly can create your text elements to be longer than 8 characters by placing them in a string array. You can create this string array during your other calculations just as you did when you added them to your matrix.


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