Table of Contents

Table Type

A table is a collection of tuples organized in a special way, where each tuple may be formed by several keys and values. The set of keys in each row must be unique.

Table Basics
Table Basics

The set of all elements at the same position in all rows defines a column. All columns must have a unique name. The names must follow the general name convention in Dinamica EGO, they must start with a “_” or a letter and must be formed by letters, numbers and underscores. Blanks in names are automatically replaced by “_” (underscore).

Keys and values can be represented using double precision floating point numbers, allowing the definition of integral and fractional values, or strings.

Internally, tables are represented using trees.

Tip: The Dinamica documentation and error messages usually express a table format as a sequence of column names/types separated by commas. For example, the sequence “City_Id*#real, City_Population#real, City_Name#string” corresponds to a table with one key column and two value/data columns. The key column is named “City_Id” with type Real Value Type, and the data/value columns are named “City_Population” and “City_Name” with types Real Value Type and String Type, respectively. It is also possible to omit the column names and represent that table format as “*#real, #real, #string”.

When stored as Comma-separated_values files, tables may also use the column name/type syntax to represent the column attributes — the name, the indication whether it is key or data/value column, and its data type.

GUI Editor

Graphical representation of the table editor

It is possible to load the editor content importing the value from a CSV file. It is also possible to export the content to a CSV file.

EGO Script

Tables are sequences of elements enclosed by [ ]. The first line of the sequence specifies the column names; every line after that is a row of key/value data, using real values or strings. See Lookup Table Type for lookup tables, a specialized, Real-only case of this same syntax with additional range-generation shorthand.

Each column name has up to three parts, always in this order:

Part Required? Meaning
Name Yes The column's name, following Dinamica EGO's general naming convention (see above).
* No Marks the column as a key column. A column without it is a value/data column.
#type No — except for empty tables, where it is required unless the type is Real Explicitly sets the column's type, overriding inference. The only valid values are #real and #string.

For example, “From*” names a key column From with no explicit type, left to inference, and “Variable_Name*#string” names a key column Variable_Name explicitly typed as String. 

[
  "From*", "To*", "Rate",
  1, 2, 0.4,  
  1, 4, 0.2,
  2, 7, 0.5,
  4, 8, 0.2
]

Here From and To are key columns (marked with *), and Rate is a value column; none specify a type, so all three are inferred as Real from their data.

The type of each column is inferred by inspecting the column's values: a column is inferred as Real if every value parses as a number, and as String otherwise — inference has no preference toward either type, it is driven entirely by the data. Elements representing strings can be surrounded by double quotes '“'. This inference is what the #type suffix above overrides — for example, appending #string to a column name forces it to be read as a string even when its values look like numbers, such as an identifier column where a value like “007” should not collapse to 7. 

[
  "Categories*", "Name", "Color_Red", "Color_Green", "Color_Blue",
  1, "soy", 20, 45, 125,
  2, "rice", 20, 100, 125,
  7, "coffee", 200, 45, 125,
  12, "sugar_cane", 75, 45, 123,
  34, "bean", 20, 45, 57,
]

The table below represents the table above without the use of double quotes. 

[
  Categories*, Name, Color_Red, Color_Green, Color_Blue,
  1, soy, 20, 45, 125,
  2, rice, 20, 100, 125,
  7, coffee, 200, 45, 125,
  12, sugar_cane, 75, 45, 123,
  34, bean, 20, 45, 57,
]

For an empty table, there is no data to infer a type from, so every column's type must be stated explicitly with a #type suffix — except Real, which remains the implicit default even with no data present, and so can still be omitted. 

[
  "From*#real", "To*#real", "Variable_Name*#string", "Upper_Range*#real", "Weight_Coefficient#real"
]

Since #real is the default, the table above can be written more compactly by omitting it wherever it appears, leaving only the one genuinely necessary #string annotation: 

[
  "From*", "To*", "Variable_Name*#string", "Upper_Range*", "Weight_Coefficient"
]

Automatic Conversions