[Kst] [Bug 116461] getdata borks when the first field in theformat file isn't (ASCII) alphabetically the first field.

[Brisset, Nicolas]

> I guess this is just a matter of my misunderstanding (from 
> 2003 to present) the design goals of dirfile formats.  Your 
> intention was that all fields in a given directory should 
> have the same number of frames.  Period.  
> 
> I thought it was a great way of grouping raw data files (of 
> arbitrary length), that I could read/write to at will however 
> I wished.
> 
> So given your design goals, the current behaviour is correct. 
>  In principle if I have some shorter length data files, they 
> should go in a separate dirfile.
> 
> Ok, well, I'm sorry that I have caused you all to rehash some 
> ancient design decisions.  I'll go and stop abusing dirfile 
> in my work ;-)
I must admit I'm not familiar with dirfiles at all, so maybe this is a
stupid suggestion, but you could use CDF or netCDF to store data in a
very compact binary format even when all fields don't have the same
length. There is support for reading CDF/netCFD in kst, and open-source
libraries to write them. To me, they look like a pretty good way to
archive data in a compact and efficient manner.

Nicolas