It feels like forever ago (it was back in 2009) that I wrote and posted to the File Exchange theedfreadfunction. At the time, I was a mere four years into my stint as a MathWorks application engineer, and I was making a lot of presentations showing users and potential users how to solve problems with the MathWorks suite of tools. In that capacity, I frequently demonstrated full dataworkflowswith our tools, from data acquisition through application generation and report publication. We have greattools for importing data(including the impressiveImport Tool), and I often made the point that difficulty getting data into MATLAB should never be the factor that determines whether or not MathWorks tools were right for a particular job or problem.

I don't recall which customer first challenged me with "What about reading EDF data? The Import Tool can't read it!" I had never heard of the EDF format, but a quick search led me to a specification document, and I set about writingedfread(in MATLAB, of course!) to facilitate readingEuropean Data Formattedfiles.

Fast forward 11 years sinceedfreadhas been on the File Exchange. In that time, it has become one of my most frequently downloaded submissions. In that time, I submittededfreadUntilDoneto accommodate files that exceeded the capacity of the original reader,Seanfeatured the file as aPick of the Weeka couple years ago, and I have spentcountlesshours trying to support the function. (My apologies if I wasn't able to get to all support requests!).

Today, I amverypleased to announce that support for reading EDF files has been incorporated into theSignal Processing Toolbox! As of the R2020b release (which is in prerelease as of this writing--ready for your evaluation), you will have access to adocumented,officially supportedEDF file reader!

(Note that the functionstilldoesn't support the"Eyelink Data Format".)

非常感谢对我们美妙的疯狂的开发人员e this happen! I will keep my functions on the File Exchange for the short term, at least, but I am deprecating support for my functions, and will steer users instead to the Signal Processing Toolbox reader. Once everyone has had an opportunity to make the switch to the officially supported version, we will reassess the status of the File Exchange versions and decide their fate in the longer term.

As always, I welcome yourthoughts and comments.

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Published with MATLAB® R2020a