saving osciloscpoe data into .dat or .trc format?

hi,

I have to save data waveforms from an oscilloscope to read it afterwards with Matlab. I have done it always in .dat, since the oscilloscope calls this format as matlab format, but I have seen that .trc files occupy much less are stored in less time and they could be opened as well in matlab. So what is the benefit of using .dat instead of .trc, does any one knows? My confussion comes due to the fact that the osciloscope call this format as matlab, this mean that has some benefit I guess.

Thanks

guillermo

[Shubh Sahu]

Is this a real world oscilloscope or simulink oscilloscope?

[Guillermo Martin]

It is a real world oscilloscope from Lecroy, but I guess than Tecktronix and other osciloscope manufacturers have the same saving options. It is the format options that you have when saving the waveform. You can save the points of the waveform in .csv as well (for Excel), but when using Matlab they recomend this .dat format. Of course .dat is better than .csv when you have 2.5Milion points and you work with Matlab. But I would say that .trc is faster and has lower size, so what is the real benefit of this .dat as compared with .trc?

thanks!

Answer 1

[Shubh Sahu]

.dat is widely used and generic format while .trc is a file extension for a debug file used by database software and it’s not generic although it takes less storage space. For more information you can refer this link

http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/echeeve1/Ref/TDS3014/MatlabTDS3014.html

[Guillermo Martin]

Thanks a lot Shubh!