Fix Line Breaks And Load - Illustrates Use of Temporary File in Data Loading

#pragma rtGlobals=1		// Use modern global access method.

//	This is an illustration of loading data from a weird file format.
//
//	In some cases, the simplest approach is to create a cleaned-up version of the file
//	as a temporary file and then to load the data from that.
//
//	In this example, the file has line breaks to limit each line to 80 characters.
//	This breaks up a single line of data into multiple lines.
//
//	We create a temporary file with the bad line breaks removed and load the temporary file.
//	You will need to tweak this for your own situation.
//
//	Please read the code and comments below before using or tweaking for your data file.

Menu "Load Waves"
	"Fix Line Breaks and Load...", FixLineBreaksAndLoad("", "")
End

//	FixText(textIn)
//	Returns cleaned up version of text without bad line breaks.
//	To keep it simple, this routine assumes that each original line of data
//	has been split into exactly two lines.
//	We also assume that the terminator is CRLF.
//	We also assume that there is a terminator for the last line of the file.
// NOTE: You will need to tweak this for your situation
static Function/S FixText(textIn)
	String textIn
	
	String textOut = ""
	
	String terminator = "\r\n"
	Variable terminatorLen = strlen(terminator)
	
	Variable offset = 0
	do
		Variable pos
		
		// Remove the bad terminator
		pos = strsearch(textIn, terminator, offset)
		if (pos < 0)
			if (offset == 0)
				DoAlert 0, "The specified terminator was not found in the file"
			endif		
			break				// No more terminators
		endif
		textOut += textIn[offset,pos-1]
		offset = pos + terminatorLen
		
		// Skip the good terminator
		pos = strsearch(textIn, terminator, offset)
		if (pos < 0)
			break				// No more terminators
		endif
		textOut += textIn[offset,pos-1] + terminator
		offset = pos + terminatorLen
	while(1)
	
	return textOut
End

//	FixLineBreaksAndLoad(pathName, fileName)
//	A data file has unwanted line breaks for lines longer than 80 characters
//	This routine creates a temporary version of the file without the bad line breaks
//	and loads data from the temporary file.
Function FixLineBreaksAndLoad(pathName, fileName)
	String pathName		// Name of an Igor symbolic path or "".
	String fileName			// Name of file or full path to file.

	Variable refNum

	// First get a valid reference to a file.
	if ((strlen(pathName)==0) || (strlen(fileName)==0))
		// Display dialog looking for file.
		// Replace /T="????" with, for example, /T=".dat" if your files are .dat files.
		Open /D /R /P=$pathName /T="????" refNum as fileName
		fileName = S_fileName			// S_fileName is set by Open/D
		if (strlen(fileName) == 0)		// User cancelled?
			return -1
		endif
	endif
	
	// Open source file and read the raw text from it into a string variable
	Open/Z=1/R/P=$pathName refNum as fileName
	if (V_flag != 0)
		return -1						// Error of some kind
	endif
	FStatus refNum						// Sets V_logEOF
	Variable numBytesInFile = V_logEOF
	String text = PadString("", numBytesInFile, 0x20)
	FBinRead refNum, text				// Read entire file into variable.
	Close refNum
	
	// Fix the text
	text = FixText(text)					// Remove bad line breaks
	
	// Write the fixed text to a temporary file
	String tempFileName = fileName + ".noindex"	// Use of .noindex prevents Spotlight from indexing the file. Otherwise we get an error when we try to delete the file because Spotlight has it open.
	Open refNum as tempFileName
	FBinWrite refNum, text
	Close refNum	
	
	// Load the temporary file
	// NOTE: You will need to tweak this for your situation
	LoadWave/J/D/E=1/Q/P=$pathName tempFileName
	if (V_flag == 0)
		Printf "An error occurred while loading data from \"%s\"\r", S_fileName
	else
		Printf "Loaded data from \"%s\"\r", S_fileName
	endif

	// Delete the temporary file	
	DeleteFile /P=$pathName tempFileName
	
	return 0
End