PDP Log files into Octave Data files (conversion tools)

Octave, is a gnu based matlab program. It is usually referred to as 'a high-level interactive language for numerical computations'. By exporting the PDP log data into octave you can use the statistical functions provided by octave on these data vectors/matrices and also use gnuplot functions to plot them visually. Gnuplot is a plotting/graphing utility incorporated into octave. To read more about octave and to download it visit http://www.octave.org/doc/octave_toc.html. For windows machines, kindly install octave within cygwin, as this will be useful later in compiling the conversion tool set up as a C-wrapper program and executing it. Presumably you must have cygwin installed to run PDP in windows. For an faq and download options for octave on windows visit http://octave.sourceforge.net/Octave_Windows.htm.

You will need:-

• parsePDPlog.c

A wrapper program that takes as input the raw log file obtained from a PDP run and the name of a file in which the octave-accessible data is written. The option -h displays the help message. The program is written in C and hence needs to be compiled before being executed. To compile the program use the following command on linux or any unix machine
gcc -g -o parse parsePDPlog.c
You can do the same using the cc compiler instead of gcc. 'parse' in the above example is the name of the executable this command will create, you may replace it with anything you wish. 'parsePDPlog.c' is the name of the C file you will download from the above link. In a windows machine you can do the same using cygwin. There is an octave version for cygwin http://octave.sourceforge.net/Octave_Windows.htm.
• parsePDPlog.pl

The program calls on a perl executable parsePDPlog.pl to do the final parsing. After this it opens the octave program. Octave has a text based interaction, basically a different kind of shell, octave shell.
• To execute the convertor: first download above two files - a C file and a perl executable. Make sure the perl file is an executable(chmod +x parsePDPlog.pl). Then compile the C file as described above. To execute either use the -h option to see the help message or type the following command:-

load <PDP log file> <octave data file>
The program will do the conversion and start an octave shell for you. You will then type the following command in the octave shell prompt:-
load <converted pdp log file(octave data file)>
The name of the octave file to be loaded will be the name you gave in as the second argument to the wrapper program. This will load the newly converted PDP data onto Octave, from here on you may access the data using the octave commands, such as plot, sum, etc.
• Problems:-


Please contact punitha@cnbc.cmu.edu for any help or to report errors.