Re: Locating a (bitmap) file

[Dave Greenwood <greenwoodde(at)ornl.gov>]

I wrote:
> Using IDL 5.3 and Windows NT I've created an IDL windows application
> (thanks to the kind folks who responded to my recent posting on the
> subject).  My application uses a couple of color bitmap labels which
> are stored as .bmp files.  The application will be used on multiple
> systems, possibly in a separate location on each system.  I'd prefer
> not to hard code the location of the .bmp files.  The question is how?
>  
[snip]
> I wouldn't mind requiring the .bmp and .sav files to be in the same
> directory if I could somehow find out from within my application
> where the .sav file is located.  Is that possible?  (I tried !DIR but
> it points to some place in the RSI distribution.)
[snip]

>From one of those anonymous RSI/Kodak lurkers came the following suggestion
which will solve my problem:

> If you make a call to HELP, CALLS = calls, the return is a
> string array whose first element (calls[0]) contains the name of
> the current routine (which you'll have to STRSPLIT to get out the
> routine name by itself.)
> 
> HELP, CALLS = calls
> thisroutine = (STRSPLIT(calls[0], ' ', /EXTRACT))[0]
> 
> With that you can call ROUTINE_INFO(name, /SOURCE) to get the
> path to the .sav or .pro file that owns that routine.  Find
> the right-most directory separator character for your
> platform (STRPOS(/REVERSE_SEARCH)) in the info.path field,
> then extract the string up to that point.
> 
> source = ROUTINE_INFO(thisroutine, /SOURCE)
> CASE STRUPCASE(!version.os_family) of
>         'WINDOWS' : dirsep = '\'
>         'UNIX' : dirsep = '/'
>         'MACOS' : dirsep = ':'
>         'VMS' : dirsep = ']'
>         ELSE : dirsep = ''
> ENDCASE
> root = STRMID(source.path, 0, STRPOS(source.path, dirsep, /REVERSE_SEARCH))
> Let's say your bitmaps are in a subdirectory named "bitmaps" beneath
> your source directory.  You can build the appropriate file name
> via
> 
> file = FILEPATH('mybitmapfile.bmp', Root = root, SubDir = ['bitmaps'])
> 
> One advantage of using this method is that there is only one step
> that actually requires platform-specific code, where you use
> perhaps a CASE statement based on !version.os_family to define the
> directory separator character.
> 
> A second advantage is that you never have to worry about the installation
> directory that your "customer" has defined; directory and file paths are
> based on locations relative to wherever it is they put the .pro/.sav files.

This second advantage is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Dave
--------------
Dave Greenwood                Email: Greenwoodde@ORNL.GOV
Oak Ridge National Lab        %STD-W-DISCLAIMER, I only speak for myself