The generic name is of the form
//catalogue/experiment/dir1/dir2/.../dirn/filenamewhere the slash character (/) is a directory delimiter, as for Unix file names, catalogue indicates in which catalogue the file resides experiment is the name of the experiment to which the file belongs The rest of the file name is free format, although its total length may not exceed 255 bytes, and each component may not exceed 20 characters. Typically, experiments will have conventions for file names. DELPHI, for example use the format (prefixed by //CERN/DELPHI)
{\bf Origin/Stage/Inst/Select/Energy/Sample/FileseqVersion}
e.g. for simulated raw data of
events:
//CERN/DELPHI/SIMD/RAWD/CERN/QQ/E093.25/P01R000001/F0001V01The generic-name differs from a conventional file name in that
The generic name is made up of several components, namely the catalogue name, the experiment name, the path name and the file name.
The catalogue name is that component of the generic name which follows the initial double slash, up to the next slash character, e.g. CERN in //CERN/NA31/886/MIN8/KS01. This does not indicate where the data resides, nor the site at which the FATMEN software is running. The same catalogue name is used on all systems where FATMEN is used by the experiment NA31, in this example. Thus the catalogue name is the logical file system. Experiments based at DESY would use generic names starting //DESY, those based at SLAC would use //SLAC, on all systems where access to the catalogue or data was required.
The experiment name follows immediately after the catalogue name. There are no particular restrictions to this name. However, the catalogues for each experiment are kept in separate files.
The path name is the complete generic name up to the last slash, e.g. //CERN/NA31/886/MIN8 in the example above.
The file name is that part of the generic name which follows the last slash, e.g. KS01 in the example above.