2.3 File types used with SEISAN

A description of the different file types is given below with typical names. Most names must be exactly as specified, others can be given names. However it is VERY important that no name including full path is more than 80 characters long. Until now this has not been a problem, however it has to be considered when SEISAN is installed.

IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT NO ASCII FILES CONTAIN TABS, USE BLANKS INSTEAD, A TAB WILL SCREW UP FORMATTING. SIMLARLY NON STANDARD ASCII CHARACTERS (MULTIBYTE) CANNOT BE USED.

A file with non standard characters can be cleaned with program REMOVE_TAB which will replace the characters with blanks.

The basic unit is a file in the Nordic format, (see Appendix A). For practical purposes 3 descriptive names are used for Nordic files:

S-file: Single event file with phase readings, with or without source parameters such as location and magnitude. In the database these files are named with the extension: .Syyymm This is the standard type of file in e.g. the BER__/1998/08/. An example is 11-1234-11L.S199808.

CAT-file: A catalog file containing many S-files with location or just a catalog of hypocenters, a compact file, see below. This is the standard type of file in e.g. the /REA/BER/CAT directory. An example is 199801.CAT. This file format is also output from several programs like SELECT and COLLECT. There is a blank line between events.

Compact file: This is a CAT-file with only the source information. One event is represented with one line, (the header line in the S-file). There is no blank line between events. A compact file can be generated by either COLLECT or NORHEAD ( earlier called COMPACT).

In addition there are the following types of files:

SEISAN waveform file: Waveform data can be stored in SEISAN, GSE, SEED, MiniSEED, Guralp, Helmberger and SAC format, see section 2.2.2. An example of a name is 1992-01-11-2233-22S.BERGE_011.

Response file: File giving the response of a given channel at a given station. They are typically generated with the RESP program, see description of CAL directory, section 41. This is the standard type of file in the CAL directory. An example of a name is ODDA_S__Z. 1999-05-01-0000_SEI. However, SEED and SAC response files extracted with rdseed or made with other programs can also be used.

File listing: This is just a file with a list of numbered files. The file name is always filenr.lis, and it is generated with the DIRF program, see 15.

Index file: This file contains a listing of absolute paths to a series of S-files. The index file can be used as input instead of the CAT-files to several programs. Several programs generate index files as e.g. select and eev. The index file has the same format as the filenr.lis files described above and can be generated with the dirf command using S-files. The index file name must contain a `.'. An example is shown below:

  1. \SEISMO\REA\TEST_\1993\09\29-2228-26D.S199309
  2. \SEISMO\REA\TEST_\1994\06\16-1841-57D.S199406
  3. \SEISMO\REA\TEST_\1996\06\03-1955-40D.S199606