Break a wave with $ reference?

When I run the below function, to add points at the beginning or end of a wave (loading the waves via string references), a tempwave wave is created in the current data folder. It is the default make wave (128 rows, each 0). If I include killwaves tempwave, however, the wave with name: sample +"_"+ stringfromlist(i,templist) is deleted.

Can I sever the connection between the dummy tempwave name and the actual name of the wave?





function wavepadding(prefstartpoint,prefendpoint,actstartpoint,actendpoint,sample,templist)
variable prefstartpoint,prefendpoint,actstartpoint,actendpoint


string sample, templist

variable i
make/o tempwave

for(i=0;i3)
insertpoints actendpoint, prefendpoint-actendpoint, tempwave
else 
insertpoints prefstartpoint, actstartpoint-prefstartpoint, tempwave
endif


endfor

end

In your sample you are not even using the made tempwave. But I suppose this is a test routine from something more complex.

To kill the actual tempwave rather than what the tempwave WAVE reference points to, you can do one of the following:


wave tempwave = $"tempwave" 
KillWaves tempwave


or just


KillWaves $"tempwave" 


You could also use a free wave and not bother with a KillWaves like so

Make/FREE tempwave 


Larry Hutchinson
WaveMetrics
support@WaveMetrics.com
Hmm...I didn't think wave could actually create the label "tempwave," only load it or assign string names to it. Does it work differently when assigning a string reference to it?
This makes a wave and also automatically makes a wave reference named temp wave which points to the wave just made:

make/o tempwave


This makes a wave reference named tempwave that points to an already-existing wave whose name is stored in a string:

string tempstring = sample +"_"+ stringfromlist(i,templist)
wave tempwave = $tempstring


I don't know why you are making a wave named tempwave. It seem more likely that you just need the wave reference.

For details execute:
DisplayHelpTopic "Wave References"
Yeah, I only need the wave reference. I was augmenting some old code for this purpose and copied the make command. But I felt it should be there, since I didn't think wave could create a new wave reference, but I see I was wrong.

Thanks for your help.