4.21 SDDS_DefineColumn

• name:
  SDDS_DefineColumn
• description:
  Processes a definition of a data column.
• synopsis: #include ”SDDS.h”
  int32_t SDDS_DefineColumn(SDDS_TABLE *SDDS_table, char *name, char *symbol, char *units, char *description, char *format_string, int32_t type, int32_t field_length)
• arguments:
  • SDDS_table: Address of the SDDS_TABLE structure for the data set.
  • name: A NULL-terminated character string giving the name of the column. Must be supplied.
  • symbol: A NULL-terminated character string giving the symbol to be used to represent the column. If none is desired, pass NULL.
  • units: A NULL-terminated character string giving the units of the column. If none is desired, pass NULL.
  • description: A NULL-terminated character string giving a description of the column. If none is desired, pass NULL.
  • format_string: A NULL-terminated character string giving a printf format string to be used to print the data for ASCII output. If NULL is passed, a reasonable default will be chosen.
  • type: An integer value specifying the data type of the column. Must be one of the following constants, defined in SDDS.h: SDDS_LONGDOUBLE, SDDS_DOUBLE, SDDS_FLOAT, SDDS_LONG, SDDS_ULONG, SDDS_SHORT, SDDS_USHORT, SDDS_CHARACTER, or SDDS_STRING.
  • field_length: An integer value given the length of the field allotted to the column for ASCII output. Ignored if zero. If negative, the field length is the absolute value, but leading and trailing white-space are eliminated from data of type SDDS_STRING upon readin.
• return value:
  On success, returns the index of the newly-defined column. Returns -1 on failure and records an error message.
• see also:
  • SDDS_DefineSimpleColumn
  • SDDS_DefineSimpleColumns
  • SDDS_GetColumnDefinition
  • SDDS_GetColumnInformation
  • SDDS_GetColumnNames
  • SDDS_NumberOfErrors
  • SDDS_PrintErrors