filetype.md

The AYLP filetype

Anyloop uses a very simple file format. A valid AYLP file is a bunch of aylp_chunks one after another in which each aylp_chunk looks like (pseudocode):

struct aylp_chunk {
	/** Header. */
	struct aylp_header header;
	/** Pipeline data. */
	union {
		// for AYLP_T_BLOCK_UCHAR or AYLP_T_MATRIX_UCHAR
		unsigned char uchars[header.log_dim.x * header.log_dim.y];
		// for AYLP_T_BLOCK, AYLP_T_VECTOR, or AYLP_T_MATRIX
		double doubles[header.log_dim.x * header.log_dim.y];
	};
};

where of course aylp_header is defined in anyloop.h. Decoding an AYLP chunk thus requires parsing header of known length, using header.type to find out whether the pipeline data is in uchars or doubles, and using header.log_dim to determine the size of the pipeline data. You can see an example of decoding an AYLP file in anyloop.jl.