New TTree has 0 entries

[mwilkins]

I would like to create a new TTree based on information in an existing TTree. (I plan to add it as a friend later.) However, the created TTree ends up with 0 entries:

In [1]: import ROOT

In [2]: infile = ROOT.TFile.Open('../DVnTuples.root')

In [3]: intree = infile.Get('X2LcpLcpTree/DecayTree')

In [4]: outfile = ROOT.TFile.Open('../test.root', 'update')

In [5]: outtree = ROOT.TTree('testtree', 'testing testing 123')

In [6]: from array import array

In [7]: mytest = array('f', [0])

In [8]: mybranch = outtree.Branch('mytest', mytest, 'mytest/F')

In [9]: for ientry in xrange(intree.GetEntries()):
   ...:     intree.GetEntry(ientry)
   ...:     mytest[0] = intree.X_ENDVERTEX_X
   ...:     mybranch.Fill()
   ...:     

In [10]: outfile.cd()
Out[10]: True

In [11]: outtree.Write('', ROOT.TObject.kOverwrite)
Out[11]: 388

In [12]: outtree.GetEntries()
Out[12]: 0L

What am I doing wrong? I suspect it has something to do with telling outtree what entry it should be on, but this is the method shown in the tutorials…

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ROOT Version: 6.17/01
Platform: macOS
Compiler: Not Provided

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[mwilkins]

I (re)discovered the solution. If the TTree is newly created, one must call TTree::Fill()–TBranch::Fill() will not properly fill the branches. However, calling TTree::Fill() on a tree that already exists results in new entries being created and 0s being filled for existing branches–in this case, one must call TBranch::Fill().

Therefore, it is necessary to know whether the TTree has been newly created and only call TTree::Fill() in that case. One must also be careful not to call TBranch::Fill() in this case–doing so will result in each value being filled twice (that is, entries 0 & 1 will have the entry 0 value, entries 2 & 3 will have the entry 1 value, and so on). The resulting tree is then truncated so it ends up with the proper number of entries.