User`s guide

E-Prime User’s Guide
Chapter 5: Data Handling
Page 175
To successfully merge the source file into the target file, the variable or log-level causing the
conflict must be renamed before attempting the merge operation again.
5.2.4.2 Duplicate Data Versus Different Runs
Another potential conflict involves duplicate data in a merged data file (i.e., merging the same
data more than once into the same file). When attempting to merge the same data more than
once, E-Merge identifies the duplicate data and attempts to resolve the conflict. E-Merge will
resolve this type of conflict by overwriting the data. Therefore, the operation does not prompt the
user to specify a course of action. However, after the merge operation, the Merge Log displays
messages indicating that the data files were overwritten.
In contrast to duplicate data is the case in which the user attempts to merge two different runs of
the same experiment having the same subject number and session number (e.g., two subjects
were assigned the same subject and session number). Even though the data are different,
having two runs with the same experiment name, subject number, and session number in the
same data file can cause confusion (e.g., an analysis by subject on this data file would be
incorrect). In addition, E-DataAid’s annotation capabilities rely on the experiment name, subject
number, and session number to reference edits in a file. Having more than one run of data with
the same experiment name, subject number, and session number in the same file could make it
difficult to follow the audit trail.
To some extent, E-Run tries to prevent this type of conflict from occurring by naming each data
file using the experiment’s name, subject number, and session number. This makes it impossible
to end up with two different runs of the same experiment with the same subject and session
number in the same data folder. Of course, if the runs are collected in different subfolders or on
different machines, this safety measure fails. For this reason, before merging a data file into a
target file, E-Merge checks for this condition. If this condition is discovered, E-Merge alerts the
user as to the conflict and presents the opportunity to take one of the following four actions:
1. Skip the file and continue with the merge operation.
2. Merge the file anyway.
3. Stop the merge operation at the point of the conflict.
4. Stop and undo the merge operation altogether.