SETWFDB(1)

NAME
setwfdb, cshsetwfdb - set WFDB environment variables

SYNOPSIS
. setwfdb
source cshsetwfdb
call setwfdb

DESCRIPTION

  sh, bash, and ksh shell users:
setwfdb sets the shell variables WFDB and WFDBCAL 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 setwfdb in the .profile file.

  csh and tcsh users:
cshsetwfdb sets WFDB and WFDBCAL 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.

  MS-DOS/MS-Windows users:
setwfdb.bat sets WFDB and WFDBCAL 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 setwfdb'' within autoexec.bat; under earlier versions of MS-DOS, use ``command /c setwfdb'', or append the contents of setwfdb.bat to autoexec.bat).

These programs are shell scripts that must be customized before using them for the first time on a new machine.

ENVIRONMENT

WFDB
    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 wfdb(3) library search for their database input files in the order specified by WFDB. If WFDB is not set, searches are limited to the current directory. Under UNIX, directory names are separated by colons (:), and the format of WFDB 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 WFDB is that of the MS-DOS PATH variable (colons may be used following drive specifiers within WFDB in this case). The Macintosh does not support environment variables as such; on the Macintosh, the value of WFDB is defined in wfdblib.h (one of the WFDB library source files, not usually included in WFDB 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 WFDB begins with `@', the remainder of the string is taken as the name of an ``indirect WFDB path file'' that defines the database path in the format described above. This feature was introduced in WFDB library version 8.0, mainly to permit Macintosh users to modify the WFDB path without recompiling the WFDB library, but it is also useful under MS-DOS to avoid the 128-character limit on the length of environment variables. Indirect WFDB path files can be nested up to 10 levels deep.

WFDBCAL The name of the WFDB calibration file (see
    wfdbcal(5)). The usual rules for finding WFDB files by searching the WFDB path apply to the WFDB calibration file, so the value of WFDBCAL need not be an absolute path name. The WFDB calibration file is used by WFDB applications that need to plot signals at standard scales, as well as by calsig(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 WFDBCAL is not set by the user, the WFDB library uses a default WFDB calibration file (wfdbcal, named in wfdblib.h). If the WFDB calibration file is not readable, programs that rely on it may not choose appropriate scales for some types of signals.

AUTHOR
George B. Moody (george@mit.edu)

SOURCES
Note that these are templates and will need to be customized before use:
http://www.physionet.org/physiotools/wfdb/app/setwfdb
http://www.physionet.org/physiotools/wfdb/app/cshsetwfdb
http://www.physionet.org/physiotools/wfdb/app/setwfdb.bat