Humdrum data format

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1. File organization specifications
2. Data format specifications

I. File organization

Humdrum files are ASCII-encoded text files. Each line of the file can be one of several record types which fall into two categories:

1. Global Records -- lines which apply to all data fields.
   1. Global comments -- lines starting in the first column with "!!".
   2. Bibliographic records -- lines starting with "!!!" then any number of non-space characters, followed by a colon, followed by the bibliographic record information.
2. Spine-Based Records
   3. Interpretation records -- records (and spines) which start with "*".
   4. Local comments -- records (and spines) which start with a single "!".
   5. Data records -- just about anything else.

Blank lines are not allowed in the Humdrum file format, but it would be wise to process them gracefully in programs that process Humdrum files.

Spines

Spines are columns of data, local comments and interpretations. Data traverses down though a spine, with one data element to a record. Multiple streams of data are separated from each other by tab characters. Exactly one tab character is allowed to separate each data fields. Two or more tabs in succession in a Humdrum file is not valid syntax. Ending or starting a line with a tab is also not valid.

Structure of spines : Data is contained in spines, with one data element to a line. To indicate the start of the data and the type of data, a spine token called an exclusive interpretation is required.

Exclusive interpretations are interpretations records that contain the string "**" followed by a name identifier for the data, consisting of any number of non-space characters (but typically 5 or less alphabetic characters). Only one exclusive interpretation is allowed in a spine, and it must come before any data in the spine.

Spine data is terminated with the interpretation "*-".

Humdrum special characters and symbols

The following characters have special organizational meanings in Humdrum files: "!", "*", "." "TAB" "NEWLINE"
• "!" (exclamation marks) -- these indicate three levels of commentary in the file
  1. !   = local comment
  2. !!  = global comment
  3. !!! = bibliographic record
• "*" (asteriks) -- these indicate interpretations to be applied to the data. There are two general categories of interpretations:
  1. Exclusive Interpretations --
  2. Tandem Interpretations --
• "." (periods) -- these are called null-tokens. They represent place holders for the previous data in the spine.
• "TAB" (tab character) -- Tabs separate individual spines from each other.
• "NEWLINE" (newline character) -- Newlines separate individual Humdrum records.

II. Data format specifications

**kern data