User`s guide

174 VEE User’s Guide
4 Analyzing and Displaying Test Data Chapter
Agilent VEE Data Shapes and Data Types
In a VEE program, data is transmitted across the lines between
objects and is then processed by subsequent objects. In order to
specify a set of data, VEE packages it into a container that has
both a data shape (scalar or array) and a data type (such as
Int32, Real64, or Text).
Data Shape: A scalar is a single number including numbers
expressed as two or more components such as complex
numbers, and an array contains a group of data items that can
be specified as one dimensional (Array 1D), two dimensional
(Array 2D), etc.
Data Types: The VEE data types are described in Table 14.
In general, you will not be concerned with data types or shapes,
because most objects operate on any VEE data type and will
automatically convert data to the type required for that object.
For example, if a Magnitude Spectrum display receives a
Waveform data type, VEE automatically performs a Fast Fourier
Transform to convert it from the time domain into the
frequency domain.
Occasionally, however, an object requires a particular data type
so it is good to be aware of them. You also want to be
aware of the differences in supported data types between
VEE and MATLAB. (For more information, refer to the
section “Working with Data Types” on page 192.)
The following are brief descriptions of VEE data types that you
can read through quickly. Issues involving using these data
types are explained in subsequent chapters.
Table 1 4 Agilent VEE Data Types
Data Type Description
UInt8 Unsigned byte 0 to 255.
Int16 A 16-bit two's complement integer (-32768 to 32767).