arf 3.0.0

installation

ARF files require HDF5>=1.8 (http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5).

The python interface requires Python 3.11 or greater and h5py>=3.11. The last version of this package to support Python 2 was 2.5.1. The last version to support h5py 2 was 2.6.7.

The C++ interface needs only HDF5 and a C++11 compiler; it has no other dependencies. If writing multithreaded code, HDF5 needs to be compiled with --enable-threadsafe. The interface is header-only and does not need to be compiled. The recommended approach is to vendor a tagged version of the project and include the headers.

version information

The specification and implementations provided in this project use a form of semantic versioning (http://semver.org). Specifications receive a major and minor version number. Changes to minor version numbers must be backwards compatible (i.e., only added requirements). The current released version of the ARF specification is 2.2.

Implementation versions evolve independently from the specification. The current versions of the python and C++ packages will write ARF files using the 2.2 spec but can read any 2.x ARF file.

There was no public release of arf prior to 2.0.

access ARF files with HDF5 tools

The structure of an arf file can be explored using the h5ls tool. For example, to list entries:

$ h5ls file.arf
test_0001                Group
test_0002                Group
test_0003                Group
test_0004                Group

Each entry appears as a Group. To list the contents of an entry, use path notation:

$ h5ls file.arf/test_0001
pcm                      Dataset {609914}

This shows that the data in test_0001 is stored in a single node, pcm}, with 609914 data points. Typically each channel will have its own dataset.

The h5dump command can be used to output data in binary format. See the HDF5 documentation for details on how to structure the output. For example, to extract sampled data to a 16-bit little-endian file (i.e., PCM format):

h5dump -d /test_0001/pcm -b LE -o test_0001.pcm file.arf

contributing

ARF has been used by the Meliza lab for auditory systems neuroscience since 2013 and by Dan Meliza since he was a postdoc in 2006. We continue to maintain it, and we welcome comments and contributions from neuroscientists and behavioral biologists interested in using it. We’re particularly interested in use cases that don’t fit the current specification. Please post issues or contact Dan Meliza (dan at meliza.org) directly.

related projects

• arfx is a commandline tool for manipulating ARF files.

license

The reference implementations are released under the BSD 3-Clause License; see COPYING. The Specification itself (specification.md) is separately licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later.