23.20 Reading and writing 2D histograms

The library provides functions for reading and writing two dimensional histograms to a file as binary data or formatted text.

Function: int gsl_histogram2d_fwrite (FILE * stream, const gsl_histogram2d * h)

This function writes the ranges and bins of the histogram h to the stream stream in binary format. The return value is 0 for success and GSL_EFAILED if there was a problem writing to the file. Since the data is written in the native binary format it may not be portable between different architectures.

Function: int gsl_histogram2d_fread (FILE * stream, gsl_histogram2d * h)

This function reads into the histogram h from the stream stream in binary format. The histogram h must be preallocated with the correct size since the function uses the number of x and y bins in h to determine how many bytes to read. The return value is 0 for success and GSL_EFAILED if there was a problem reading from the file. The data is assumed to have been written in the native binary format on the same architecture.

Function: int gsl_histogram2d_fprintf (FILE * stream, const gsl_histogram2d * h, const char * range_format, const char * bin_format)

This function writes the ranges and bins of the histogram h line-by-line to the stream stream using the format specifiers range_format and bin_format. These should be one of the %g, %e or %f formats for floating point numbers. The function returns 0 for success and GSL_EFAILED if there was a problem writing to the file. The histogram output is formatted in five columns, and the columns are separated by spaces, like this,

xrange[0] xrange[1] yrange[0] yrange[1] bin(0,0)
xrange[0] xrange[1] yrange[1] yrange[2] bin(0,1)
xrange[0] xrange[1] yrange[2] yrange[3] bin(0,2)
....
xrange[0] xrange[1] yrange[ny-1] yrange[ny] bin(0,ny-1)

xrange[1] xrange[2] yrange[0] yrange[1] bin(1,0)
xrange[1] xrange[2] yrange[1] yrange[2] bin(1,1)
xrange[1] xrange[2] yrange[1] yrange[2] bin(1,2)
....
xrange[1] xrange[2] yrange[ny-1] yrange[ny] bin(1,ny-1)

....

xrange[nx-1] xrange[nx] yrange[0] yrange[1] bin(nx-1,0)
xrange[nx-1] xrange[nx] yrange[1] yrange[2] bin(nx-1,1)
xrange[nx-1] xrange[nx] yrange[1] yrange[2] bin(nx-1,2)
....
xrange[nx-1] xrange[nx] yrange[ny-1] yrange[ny] bin(nx-1,ny-1)

Each line contains the lower and upper limits of the bin and the contents of the bin. Since the upper limits of the each bin are the lower limits of the neighboring bins there is duplication of these values but this allows the histogram to be manipulated with line-oriented tools.

Function: int gsl_histogram2d_fscanf (FILE * stream, gsl_histogram2d * h)

This function reads formatted data from the stream stream into the histogram h. The data is assumed to be in the five-column format used by gsl_histogram2d_fprintf. The histogram h must be preallocated with the correct lengths since the function uses the sizes of h to determine how many numbers to read. The function returns 0 for success and GSL_EFAILED if there was a problem reading from the file.