Changing Column Orders of Log File

wishiknewprogramming

Hi everyone,

I would like to thanks for the forum again, it has been extremely useful for me. I have a question about the log files.

I will run an experiment on JATOS using OSWeb and we are expecting to have hundreds of participants. Therefore, we will use a MatLab code to extract the needed data from the .xlsx log file using the column numbers as an index. However, experiment is a bit long and includes a lot of loops and variables, so that index of the columns that we care about always change in each participant. All the results are aligned if I download all results as a single log file, however, this is also not possible and I need to analyze them separately. I also don't want to exclude any data in the log file and want to log everything.

I thought of putting "a" letter at the beginning of the variable names (e.g. a_phase, a_trial_type, a_response_visual_x) because things get confused after response and time variables start (after three-letter-columns like AAD or ABE), but it is okay if they are showed at the beginning of the excel file (e.g. column D, column EE, etc). However, "response" variable is something very important for us and it is default, so its changing index would be a problem. Do you have any suggestions for that issue?

Thanks for your help in advance, as always.

Best,

Jonah

lvanderlinden

Hi Jonah,

Column order is indeed alphabetical, but it seems like an enhancement is planned which enables to sort columns by the order of appearance of variables:

• https://github.com/open-cogsci/OpenSesame/issues/674

In response to your questions: It might be worth it to invest some time in learning programming skills for analyzing spreadsheet-data. Two Python-based examples are:

• pandas: https://pandas.pydata.org/
• DataMatrix: https://datamatrix.cogsci.nl/

You'll see that this will give you much more flexibility and freedom than being dependent on spreadsheet programs like Excel or LibreOffice.

Cheers,

Lotje

wishiknewprogramming

Hi @lvanderlinden ,

Thanks for your reply!

Best,

Jonah