COMSOL Multiphysics™

Terminology
The following data types are used in the serialization:
• Boolean refers to an 8-bit signed character which must be 0 or 1.
• Character refers to an 8-bit signed character.
• Integer refers to a 32-bit signed integer.
• Double refers to a 64-bit double.
Matrices are stored in row-major order. In this documentation we use brackets to
indicate a matrix. Hence, integer[3][4] means that 12 integers representing a
matrix are store in the file. The first three entries corresponds to the integers in the first
row of the matrix, and so on.
Text File Format
COMSOL Multiphysics text file, using the file extension .mphtxt, are text files where
values are stored as text separated by whitespace characters.
Lexical conventions:
• Strings are serialized as the length of the string followed by a space and then the
characters of the string, for example, “6 COMSOL”. This is the only place where
whitespace matters.
• The software ignores everything following a # on a line except when reading a
string. This makes it possible to store comments in the file.
Binary File Format
COMSOL Multiphysics binary file, using the extension .mphbin, are binary files with
the following data representation:
• Integers and doubles are stored in little-endian byte order.
• Strings are stored as the length of the string (integer) followed by the characters of
the string (integers).
SAVING AND LOADING
You can import COMSOL Multiphysics files into the COMSOL Multiphysics GUI or
load them as variables into COMSOL Script (or MATLAB).
428 | CHAPTER 3: THE COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS FILES