ModifyGraph flags to allow modification of multiple windows

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Fri, 06/28/2019 - 06:43 am

I often have two or more graphs that I want to alter in exactly the same way with ModifyGraph (mainly from the command line, not in a function). It would be great to have a new flag (or two) to allow this. For years, I have been using a procedure of my own to do this (included at the bottom of this post for clarity). That has a major downside that there is no syntax checking of the command that I want to run until it executes.

The new flags I propose are:

/N=numWins where numWins is the number of windows, starting from the top of the window stack, on which the ModifyGraph command is to be run. the /W flag would cause this flag to be ignored. /N=1 in the absence of the /W flag would behave as ModifyGraph does now.

/WINS=matchStr where the modifygraph command will be repeated on any windows whose name matches matchStr. The /N flag can be used in conjunction in order to run the command on a specified number of top-most matching windows.

There are other procedures that would benefit from similar flags (ModifyImage, ModifyTable, etc.), but it would be most useful for ModifyGraph, at least the way I use Igor. 

 

function disp_general(cmdStr,listOfMatchStrs,numGraphs[printWinN])
    String cmdStr //command to run on window
    String listOfMatchStrs //semi-colon delimited list of match strings that specify the window names to run the cmdStr on
    Variable numGraphs //number of matching graphs (starting from top-most in the experiment) to run the cmdStr on
    Variable printWinN      //optionally pass and use %s in cmdStr where window name should go, suppresses bringing window to top
   
    if (strlen(listOfMatchStrs) < 1)
        listOfMatchStrs = "*"       //default to all graphs
    endif  
   
    String list = text_matchesToListOfMatchStrs(winlist("*",";","WIN:1"), listOfMatchStrs) //returns matching window names
    Variable doPrintWinN=!ParamIsDefault(printWinN) && printWinN
   
    STring finalStr     //only for doPrintWinN
    Variable i,numWins=min(numGraphs,itemsinlist(list)); String winN;
    for (i=0;i<numWins;i+=1)
        winN = StringFromList(i, list)
        if (strlen(winN) < 1)
            continue
        endif
       
        if (doPrintWinN)
            sprintf finalStr,cmdStr,winN
            Execute finalStr
       
        else
            Dowindow/F $winN    //bring to front
            if (strlen(cmdStr) > 0)
                Execute cmdStr
            endif
        endif
    endfor
    dowindow/H/F //send the command window back to the top of the desktop.
end