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Full Discussion: Should I say "field 8" or "column 8" in this case?
Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Should I say "field 8" or "column 8" in this case? Post 302784411 by drl on Friday 22nd of March 2013 07:13:15 AM
Old 03-22-2013
Hi.

Good topic. It may help all of us communicate better.

I tend to prefer the term fields when talking about variable-width data groups, and columns when considering fixed-width data. The article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_(computer_science) pretty much describes my outlook. If there is a separator character or string, I'd call it variable-width, even if all of the members of a specific group are the same width, primarily because any member could become a different width in the future.

From a historical point of view, the FORTRAN influence caused people to describe data in terms of fields even though the data were in fixed-width. Only somewhat later, perhaps in the '70s or '80s would the idea of free-form data become more prevalent.

Thanks for starting the discussion ... cheers, drl
Last edited by drl; 03-22-2013 at 08:20 AM..
 

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LEARN ABOUT MINIX

pgmkernel

pgmkernel(1)                                                  General Commands Manual                                                 pgmkernel(1)

NAME

       pgmkernel - generate a convolution kernel

SYNOPSIS

       pgmkernel [ -weight w ] width [ height ]

DESCRIPTION

       Generates a portable graymap array of size width x height (or width x width if height is not specified) to be used as a convolution file by
       pnmconvol.  The data in the convolution array K are computed according to the formula:

       K(i,j) = 1 / ( 1 + w * sqrt((i-width/2)^2 + (j-height/2)^2))

       where w is a coefficient specified via the -weight flag, and width and height are the X and Y filter sizes.

       The output PGM file is always written out in ASCII format.

OPTIONS

       The optional -weight flag should be a real number greater than -1.  The default value is 6.0.

BUGS

       The computation time is proportional to width * height.  This increases rapidly with the increase of the kernel size.   A  better  approach
       could be using a FFT in these cases.

SEE ALSO

       pnmconvol(1), pnmsmooth(1)

AUTHOR

       Alberto Accomazzi (alberto@cfa.harvard.edu).

                                                                 10 December 1992                                                     pgmkernel(1)
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