Hi,
We use a custom analyzer to analyze data frames. The output of this can get quite long, so long even that the decoded data is a text string long er than 1024 characters.
In the Data Table, the data is showed ok (or so I presume, but my screen is not wide enough to actually show this). When I select one or more rows, I can copy (ctrl-C) and paste (ctrl-V) into a text editor and see all data, more than 1024 characters.
However, I noticed that if I use the “Export Table” feature on decoded data, the data is cropped at 1024 characters. This happens both for CSV and for Clipboard export.
Workaround is therefore to select all rows, manually copy and paste.
Could this limit be removed or could this be mitigated in a more useful way?
@folkert.roscamabbing This looks like a scenario I haven’t personally tested. The 1,024 character limit does sound like some kind of limit we set for exporting the data table. It could be an arbitrary limit, and I’m not sure why we chose that number. We may have just wanted to implement some kind of limit to ensure nothing crashes or breaks.
Doing a quick Google search shows that csv files technically have no limit, but Excel imposes a 32,767 character limit per cell. 1,024 is well below that limit. So, technically speaking, we could potentially just remove that limit, or bump it up by default.
Though cumbersome, I’m glad you have a workaround for now. Perhaps we could introduce an optional setting that allows you to increase that character limit.
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I don’t have a quick way of testing this, but does directly Exporting Analyzer Results (instructions below) impose the same limitations for you?
Exporting Data - Saleae Support
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How many characters maximum would you prefer per cell, assuming a character limit is required?
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Can you share a bit more details about your workflow and how you plan on working with your exported data? Having that many characters in a single cell is a use case we’re not too familiar with, and is likely not a common requirement, so we’d love to learn more and get some background information on that!
Dear Tim,
I did use the export data table as described in the link. Export raw data does not seem to export the decoded results (as the name implies).
For the current usecase, max characters is around ~1500 or so, but it can be up to a few times that, so around 5000 or so. If it’s all the same, I would say why not 32.767?
The workflow does require some post-processing of the CSV file (mostly find-and-replace to insert tabs in the data field, I use notepad++ for this) to make it easier to analyze using Excel. Also now working on a python script that does the same postprocessing.
@folkert.roscamabbing Hope you’re doing well! I wanted to follow up with you on this topic and we wanted to spend some time exploring this potential limitation with our software.
We needed your help to quickly test this. None of our pre-installed analyzers were designed to print that many characters in a single box.
As such, would you mind sharing your custom analyzer library file with us, and a sample capture file that immediately shows this limitation? That way, we can quickly reproduce the error on our end.
Please feel free to trim down your capture file as well to only a few data transactions to save on file size.
@folkert.roscamabbing In case you’d like to privately share those files with us, we can move this over to email as well. Feel free to submit that to me using the link below if so and we can continue our chat via email.
https://contact.saleae.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Just just let us know in the description box that it’s you by providing a link to this forum post.