FORMat[:DATA] <char>

(Read-Write) Set and query the format (binary or ASCii) by which FieldFox data is read.

Data is read using the following commands:

• NF, PAA, SA Mode: TRACe:DATA?

• NA and CAT modes: CALCulate:DATA:FDATa?, CALCulate:DATA:FMEM?, CALCulate:DATA:SDATa?, CALCulate:DATA:SMEM?

• Calibration data (NA, CAT, and VVM modes): [:SENSe]:CORRection:COEFficient[:DATA]

•  To change the byte order, refer to :FORM:BORD.

Note: Do NOT do Binary Block transfers (REAL, 32 or REAL, 64) when using over Telnet to port 5024 on FieldFox.

Relevant Modes

ALL

Parameters

<char>

Choose from:

• REAL,32 - Best for transferring large amounts of measurement data.(Binary data)

• REAL,64 - Slower but has more significant digits than REAL,32. Use REAL,64 if you have a computer that doesn't support REAL,32. (Binary data)

• ASCii,0 - The easiest to implement, but very slow. Use when you have small amounts of data to transfer. ASCii,0 returns a carriage return (“\n”) terminated, comma-separated list of numbers, which might be re,im pairs, or could be scalar numbers corresponding to the current instrument format (such as LogMag) for FDATA?

Notes:

- The REAL,32 and REAL,64 arguments transfer data in block format. The byte order is little endian. FORM:BORDer, which reverses the byte order, is NOT supported.

- If the I/Q data format is set to ASCii,0, the maximum I/Q data length is 50k.

Block Data

The following graphic shows the syntax for definite block data.

Only the Data Byte is sent in either Binary or ASCii format.

All other characters are ASCii format.

<num_digits> specifies how many digits are contained in <byte_count>

<byte_count> specifies how many data bytes will follow in <data bytes>

Example of Definite Block Data

#17ABC+XYZ<nl><end>

Where:

• # - always sent before definite block data  (ascii format)

• 1 - specifies that the byte count is one digit (7)  (ascii format)

• 7 - specifies the number of data bytes that will follow, not counting <NL><END>  (ascii format)

• ABC+XYZ – Data  (binary or ascii format)

• <NL> - always sent at the end of block data to indicate the last character being sent (program message terminator) -  (ascii format)

• <END> - just for illustrative purposes and indicates the end of the data transmission.

Binary Data Notes:

The format is described by either REAL,32 (which indicates that each number takes 4 bytes) or REAL,64  (which indicates that each number takes 8 bytes). No separator is necessary between the numbers.

For a trace with 1001 complex points (real, imag) in REAL,64 format, the header would describe a 1001*2*8=16016 byte block, so it would be: #516016 followed by 16016 bytes of data.

For a trace with 5 data points in LogMag format in REAL,32 format, the header would describe a 5*1*4=20 byte block, so it would be: #220 followed by 20 bytes of data.

Examples

FORM REAL,32

See example parsing program in C#.

Query Syntax

FORMat[:DATA]?

Default

ASCii,0