Roulette Program: Instructions - Output File

Roulette writes data to an text file. The default location for the text file is C:\roulette.txt. This file information can be changed in the control panel.

SAMPLE TEXT FILE


IMPORTING THE DATA FILE:

1) The text file is designed to open into an Excel spreadsheet. Open your Excel program and choose Open from the File Menu. A browser will open so you can select your text file. Since the file is in .txt format, the text import window will open. Make sure you select the Delimited option in Step 1 of 3. Click Next.

2) In Step 2 of 3 you need to tell excel that the data are seperated by commas. Click Next.

3) In Step 3 of 3 you just need to click Next again.

4) Below is a screen print of how the spreadsheet will look:

5) If you notice the header in row 14 still needs to be parsed out. Do this by selecting cell column A - row 14 as seen below.

6) Next select Data - Text to Columns from the main menu. Repeat steps 4 to 6.

7) You should have a nice header row:

READING THE DATA FILE

1) The text file is an append file. This means that each time the program is run, new data will be appended to the bottom of the existing file. Existing data will not be deleted or over written.

2) Each time the program runs it will write a header to the file. The header contains some information about the program, plus the time and date the program was run (see below). The next few lines are parameters set in the control file.

3) Next a header is written to the file. After each spin the trial number, player information, winning number etc. are printed to the text file.

4) Each time the player makes a bet, the latency time and position, plus the time since the trial began (pressing of the clear button) are written to file.

5) When the player presses the spin button, the time from the last bet to the spin is recorded. The next line corresponds with the header from #3. It indicates that the player was controlling the program, the winning number was 8, 16 chips were played, 0 chips were won and 84 chips are left, the player made one 1:1 bet and 15 36:1 bets.