CHAIN - Concatenates a series of vectorized NDFs

Description:

This application concatenates a series of NDFs  in the order supplied and treated as vectors, to form a one-dimensional output NDF. The dimensions of the NDFs may be different, and indeed so may their dimensionalities.

Usage:

chain in c1 [c2] [c3] ... [c25] out=?

Parameters:

IN = NDF (Read)

The base NDF after which the other input NDFs will be concatenated.

OUT = NDF (Write)

The one-dimensional NDF resulting from concatenating the input NDFs.

C1-C25 = NDF (Read)

The NDFs to be concatenated to the base NDF. The NDFs are joined in the order C1, C2, ...C25. There can be no missing NDFs, e.g. in order for C3 to be processed there must be a C2 given as well. A null value (!) indicates that there is no NDF. NDFs C2 to C25 are defaulted to !. At least one NDF must be pasted, therefore C1 may not be null.

TITLE = LITERAL (Read)

Title for the output NDF structure. A null value (!) propagates the title from the base NDF to the output NDF. [!]

Examples:

chain obs1 obs2 out=stream

This concatenates the NDF called obs2 on to the arrays in the NDF called obs1 to produce the one-dimensional NDF stream.

chain c1=obs2 c2=obs1 in=obs3 out=stream

This concatenates the NDF called obs2 on to the arrays in the NDF called obs3, and then concatenates the arrays from obs1 to them to produce the one-dimensional NDF stream.

Related Applications :

KAPPA: PASTE, RESHAPE.

Implementation Status:

• This routine correctly processes the DATA, QUALITY, VARIANCE, LABEL, TITLE, UNITS, and HISTORY, components of an NDF data structure and propagates all extensions. Propagation is from the base NDF. WCS, and AXIS  information is lost.

• All non-complex numeric data types can be handled.

• Any number of NDF dimensions is supported.