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Dayfile.txt: Difference between revisions
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→Viewing or Editing the daily summary log
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*The system routines that Cumulus uses to access dayfile.txt require exclusive use of that file, so if you have any other process trying to access that file when Cumulus restarts, when Cumulus processes end of the (meteorological) day, or when a relevant option is selected from View or Edit menus, either your external process or the Cumulus process may fail.
Both Cumulus 1 and 3 (2 did not) now provide editors where you can see what is in your dayfile.txt log, and if you click on a particular line you can edit the fields in that line, or indeed delete that line.
{{Version badge 1}}The Cumulus 1 editor provides a "Create Missing" option where it will, for any dates for which a line does not exist, create a line if it can from reading the [[Monthly log files|detailed log file]] to extract all values relevant to that day and do the necessary minimum/maximum/total/average calculation for each dayfile.txt field, storing the time from the relevant other log file in any time-stamp field in dayfile.txt.
[[File:Badge vMx.png]]For Cumulus MX, when you select a line, both '''Edit''' and '''Delete''' buttons are enabled. Pick Edit, click that and an editing screen pops up, that does not let you change the line number nor the date, but all other fields show their current contents and you can overtype as necessary. Scroll down to see 2 buttons (how they are labelled depends on which version you are using), the left button ignores any edits you have made (it is 'cancel' even if it is labelled 'close'), and the right hand button saves your changes (even if it is labelled 'Edit').
If you want to recalculate the values and time-stamp for any entry in dayfile.txt from reading the [[Monthly log files|detailed log file]] to extract all values relevant to that day and do the necessary minimum/maximum/total/average calculation, MX does not have that capability, but it can be done in a script if you are a programmer. I have done this, but it was not as easy as I thought, the log file you read from may have duplicate times potentially making the calculation harder, and you cannot edit the file as you go along, you basically rename the old file and create a new file with original name as you work through all days changing individual fields whenever you need to.
{{Version badge 1}}Apart from bulk changes, Cumulus 1 made editing this log file quite easy. Although the create missing did not work where a line was present for the date, but an individual field needed to be corrected or populated, there was a [[Monthly_log_files#Using_Monthly_logs_to_deal_with_shorter_.28or_incomplete.29_dayfile.txt_records_for_particular_dates |work around]] for this.
[[File:Badge vMx.png]]The beta versions of MX did not include any feature to view or edit dayfile.txt, so any checking or editing had to take place outside the software. As mentioned above, MX does not provide any way to read, or calculate, values from any other file, nor will it do bulk edits. For any of these, you will need to take a copy of the Cumulus file and manipulate using a script or a spreadsheet processor. Do be careful not to change the encoding, the position of line feeds, the format of any field, the locale, or anything else that might stop MX being able to read the file.
▲=== Editing the file or other Manipulation outside Cumulus ===
The file is <tt>data\dayfile.txt</tt> within the directory holding the Cumulus executable, it can be viewed in a text editor, imported into various database systems, or imported into spreadsheets, to manipulate as you wish. Just remember that Cumulus reads it when it is restarted, and updates it as part of the rollover process, so never attempt to work on it either when Cumulus has just been restarted and is checking/updating (and possibly doing a rollover of logs), or around the midnight/9am/10am local rollover time when Cumulus is writing a new row.
'''Note''': Since new versions/builds can add to number of fields, Cumulus will accept lines of 15 fields or more (including without the more recent fields at the end). (Additions by versions are indicated below, you can explore details of earlier versions via the official [Software software/download] page).
These notes were written for Cumulus 1, at the time this article was updated MX had not introduced any changes to the Cumulus 1 version of this daily log file, but check release notes in case that is no longer true in the future.
* The file must never be edited with a word processor, as they store many control and identification characters that prevent Cumulus correctly reading the values.
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