Geosoft Table File (*.TBL)

A table file consists of a comment header, which is indicated by ‘/" characters at the start of each line, followed by columns of data. The comment header of a table file is scanned to find lines that begin with ‘/=’, and these lines are interpreted to determine the contents of the data in the file. Each column must have a ‘/=’ header line that describes the data using the syntax:

Name:type [:I]

Each column has a name and a type, which can be 'real', 'double', 'int', 'date', 'time', 'line' (line name) or 'string'. The optional ':i' indicates that a column should be used as an index for looking up data in the table. In this case, corrections are looked up based on a date and time index. For the column type 'string', (indicating that the column contains characters, not numbers) the header line will contain a number indicating the width of the column in characters. For example, to create a 'string' column with a width of 80 characters, the header line would be:

/= name:string80

A table file header may also contain parameter block settings that are entered into the current Oasis parameter clock when the table is read. Parameter settings are indicated by header lines that begin with a ‘//". In the example below, the parameter MAGBASE.BASE is defined for information only. It indicates that the established magnetic base station value is 64,545 nT.

The following is a sample of a Geosoft table file *.tbl: