Naming Convention for LIGO Trigger Files T050017-00 Authors: DASWG Distribution of this draft: DASWG INTRODUCTION This document establishes a naming convention for trigger files which will be published into the LDR catalogs and replicated using LDR. The purpose of this naming convention is to allow any person or robot to determine basic information about the contents of trigger files from their names, without having to open and read the files. LIGO-Lightweight FILE NAMING CONVENTION All files to be published into our data catalogs must the form S-D-G-T.xml where: S indicates the source of the data. This consists of one or more interferometer identification strings in alphabetical order, e.g. a file containing triggers from Hanford 4km would have H1, while a file containing triggers from Hanford 2km and GEO would have "G1H2" D is a description of the contents of a file. Files must have an uppercase keyword designating the search (e.g. INSPIRAL) followed by any other string consisting of alphanumeric characters plus underscore (_), plus (+), and number (#). In particular, dots (.), dashes (-), and spaces are prohibited. G is the GPS time (integer number of seconds) at the beginning of the data that was processed to produce the triggers. This is either a 9-digit or 10-digit number. T is the total time interval covered by the file, in seconds. This field is required even if T=1. If the data is aligned with exact GPS seconds, then T is simply the number of seconds between the beginning and the end of the data analyzed to generate the triggers. (If the data is not aligned with exact GPS seconds, then T should be calculated from the exact GPS second just before the start of the data to the exact GPS second just after the end of the data. For example, a file which contains data from t=700000035.42 to t=700000038.23 would have a name like "H-R-700000035-4.gwf" even though the actual duration of the file is 2.81 seconds.) EXAMPLES L1-INSPIRAL-729350927-2048.xml Inspiral triggers generated by searching 2048 seconds of data from the Livingston 4km instrument. The data started at 729350927. L1-INCA_L1H1H2-733298486-2176.xml Triggers generated by the inspiral coincidence analysis (INCA) by making a coincidence between L1 & H1 & H2. The triggers in the file are generated by searching 2176 seconds of Livingston data which started at 733298486.