Re: template for READ_ASCII

[m.hadfield(at)niwa.cri.nz (Mark Hadfield)]

From: "Bob Fugate" <rqfugate@mindspring.com>

> My question is, can I save the template somehow so I don't have to
> regenerate it with ASCII_TEMPLATE each time I restart IDL and  want to
read
> new tables? I realize I only have to run ASCII_TEMPLATE once each session
> but I would like to make this completely automatic and so I don't have to
> manually go through the GUI each day. It is not a really big deal but I am
> getting greedy.

The template is an IDL structure. You can save it to disk with SAVE and
restore it with RESTORE.

Here's how I would do it:

function read_myfile, file
    common myblock, template
    if n_elements(template) eq 0 then begin
        template_file = <specify your template file name here>
        case file_test(template_file, /READ) of
            0: begin
                template = ascii_template(file)
                save, FILENAME=template_file
            end
            1: restore, FILENAME=template_file
    endif
    return, read_ascii(file, TEMPLATE=template)
end

---
Mark Hadfield
m.hadfield@niwa.cri.nz  http://katipo.niwa.cri.nz/~hadfield
National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research



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