ECG Database Applications Guide
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setdb, cshsetdb, dossetdb - set DB environment variables
. setdb
source cshsetdb
dossetdb
setdb
sets the shell variables DB and DBCAL to the appropriate values to permit
access to on-line ECG databases. It must be executed using the ``.'' as shown
above. A frequent user of the databases will find it convenient to include
an invocation of setdb in the .profile file.
cshsetdb
sets DB and DBCAL similarly for the C-shell. It must be executed using
``source'' as shown above. It may be convenient to include this command in
the .cshrc file.
dossetdb sets DB and DBCAL similarly for MS-DOS;
it also sets VIEWP (see view(1)
). It may be convenient to include this
command in the autoexec.bat file (under MS-DOS 3.3 and later, include the
command ``call dossetdb'' within autoexec.bat; under earlier versions of MS-DOS,
use ``command /c dossetdb'', or append the contents of dossetdb.bat to autoexec.bat).
These programs are shell scripts that must be customized before using
them for the first time on a new machine.
- DB
- The database path:
a list of directories that contain database files. An empty component
is taken to refer to the current directory. All applications built with
the db(3)
library search for their database input files in the order specified
by DB. If DB is not set, searches are limited to the current directory.
Under UNIX, directory names are separated by colons (:), and the format
of DB is that of the Bourne shell's PATH variable (see sh(1)
). Under MS-DOS,
directory names are separated by semicolons (;), and the format of DB
is that of the MS-DOS PATH variable (colons may be used following drive
specifiers within DB in this case). The Macintosh does not support environment
variables as such; on the Macintosh, the value of DB is defined in dblib.h
(one of the DB library source files, not usually included in DB applications),
and it contains a semicolon-delimited list of directories (folders) as
under MS-DOS, but with colons used as directory separators rather than
backslashes as under MS-DOS. Under any environment, if the value of DB begins
with `@', the remainder of the string is taken as the name of an ``indirect
DB path file'' that defines the database path in the format described above.
This feature was introduced in DB library version 8.0, mainly to permit
Macintosh users to modify the DB path without recompiling the DB library,
but it is also useful under MS-DOS to avoid the 128-character limit on the
length of environment variables. Indirect DB path files can be nested
up to 10 levels deep.
- DBCAL
- The name of the DB calibration file (see dbcal(5)
).
The usual rules for finding DB files by searching the DB path apply to
the DB calibration file, so the value of DBCAL need not be an absolute
path name. The DB calibration file is used by DB applications that need
to plot signals at standard scales, as well as by calibrate(1)
, which
can determine the baseline and gain of signals if calibration pulses are
present and if the parameters of the calibration pulses are described
in the calibration file. If DBCAL is not set by the user, the DB library
uses a default DB calibration file (dbcal, named in dblib.h). If the DB
calibration file is not readable, programs that rely on it may not choose
appropriate scales for some types of signals.
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