Writing metadata into TFile

ROOT
1

_ROOT Version: 6.16/00
_Platform: Ubuntu 20.04 (WSL)
Compiler: Not Provided

I have been trying to save some information that describes the content I am saving into a TFile. But, I do not found an explicit example.
I will an exact part of my problem. Filling the histograms can be splitter into two cases A, B; so I have tan histograms for each case. Either A, or B, are described by a variable that is not linked to any information you can retrieve from the class. These descriptors are counters, that I would use later to “Scale()” the TH1 objects. But, I need these counters to be saved into the TFile. I am using an additional ASCII file to store this metadata, but I found it inefficient.

How can I save this information into the TFile? These running variables can be of different types, but I am mostly interested in saving Int_t, Bool_t.

Thanks in advance.

2

I think @pcanal can help.
TObjString might be an option ?
Also search on this forum that question was already asked.

3

Hi Dario,

I’m not saying this is ideal (it’s far from it), but in principle you can store your Int_t in a special 1D histogram. Fill it once, and then do yourHistogram->GetMean().

The same goes for a Bool_t: make a 1D histogram with just two bins, -0.5 < x < 0.5 and 0.5 < x < 1.5, fill it with either 0 (false) or 1 (true), and then

const Bool_t isTrue = yourHistogram2->GetMean()>0.5 ? true:false;

or even simpler

const Bool_t isTrue = yourHistogram2->GetMean()>0.5;
4

Also search on this forum that question was already asked.

I really look for that, but I did not found the exact problem. I found something similar but did not work for me.
Moreover, I am pretty new with ROOT, so I am not sure what to do with the TObjString

5

This could work in the bool type case but is not feasible for the int type: some of them are in a too wide range, so probably exceed the max number of bins a TH1 can store

6

This could work in the bool type case but is not feasible for the int type: some of them are in a too wide range, so probably exceed the max number of bins a TH1 can store

In this case I guess you can fill a fixed bin (e.g., bin #1) with your value. And then get this value:

int myValue = 424242;
yourHistogram->Fill(1, myValue);
// write yourHistogram to the file, close the file

// now open your file in another program and read the value back:
const int myValue = static_cast<int>(yourHistogram->GetBinContent(1));
7

To save individual ints and floats, you can use a TParameter objects.

If you have multiple ‘related’ ints and floats, you may also want to consider a TTree filled with them.

8

Hope that does the work.
Could you please put me an example of how to use it?

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TParameter<int> param("somename", 10);
....
file->WriteTObject(&param);
10

Thanks a lot.
Could you write down how to retrieve this from the file to int type variable?

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