Parsing Strings and naming waves

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Hi All,

When I load waves in Igor I get the filename as a string. My filename is too long to have as a wavename but I'd like to abbreviate the filename to do so.
I was hoping someone could point me in towards the relevant literature to get an idea how to do this so I can read around and make better code.

For example I'll name my file S1_variable1_variable2_variable3_variableN.txt
If I wanted to have my igor wave name as "S1_variableN" How would I Achieve this?

Under a similar line of thought. When I mass duplicate waves I will make for example a line of code:

Wave Wave1
String NewName = NameOfWave(Wave1) + "_duplicate"
Duplicate Wave1, NewName


After I now have wave1 and wave1_duplicate.

Is there a way to take wave1_duplicate name and turn it into wave1_transposed. Here I'd like to replace the "_duplicate" with "_transpose" for example.

I guess this should be under string manipulation or something? I'm not sure where to look in the manual to help get me started. I'm completely self taught and I feel there must be a chapter somewhere in the manual explaining this stuff.

Sorry this is kind of vague but thanks for any help you can give.

Best,
N
You need to use ReplaceString for these kinds of tasks.
In the first example ReplaceString("variable1_variable2_variable3_",fileName,"")
If you don't know what variable1_variable2 etc. are you can read them using SplitString or put the string together using the possibilities if they are a combination of known variables.
Second example, ReplaceString("_duplicate",NewName,"_transpose")
ReplaceString works on the same string you don't have to make a new string, e.g. NewName = ReplaceString("_duplicate",NewName,"_transpose")
FWIW I would shorten _duplicate to _d to save on characters especially if you are near the limit.

February 10, 2017 at 04:42 am - Permalink
[quote=n.black]
When I load waves in Igor I get the filename as a string. My filename is too long to have as a wavename but I'd like to abbreviate the filename to do so.
I was hoping someone could point me in towards the relevant literature to get an idea how to do this so I can read around and make better code.

For example I'll name my file S1_variable1_variable2_variable3_variableN.txt
If I wanted to have my igor wave name as "S1_variableN" How would I Achieve this?
[/quote]

Sounds like you might want to look into String Indexing. But this is only useful if your filenames are consistent and predictable. Following your example

 
String sOldName = "S1_variable1_variable2_variable3_variableN.txt"
String sNewName = sOldName[0,10] + sOldName[strlen(sOldName) - 5]


This results in sNewName having the value "S1_variableN"

Other useful functions in this realm are:
sprintf
stringmatch
strsearch
parsefilepath



[quote]
Under a similar line of thought. When I mass duplicate waves I will make for example a line of code:

Wave Wave1
String NewName = NameOfWave(Wave1) + "_duplicate"
Duplicate Wave1, NewName


After I now have wave1 and wave1_duplicate.

Is there a way to take wave1_duplicate name and turn it into wave1_transposed. Here I'd like to replace the "_duplicate" with "_transpose" for example.

I guess this should be under string manipulation or something? I'm not sure where to look in the manual to help get me started. I'm completely self taught and I feel there must be a chapter somewhere in the manual explaining this stuff.
[/quote]

See if the Rename operation meets your needs.

It has the form

Rename oldName, newName

But it can't overwrite an object with the same name.

February 10, 2017 at 08:29 am - Permalink
A couple of additional points:
1. Using sscanf is sometimes easier than using SplitString, especially if you're not a regular expressions guru.
2. You may find the following functions useful in cases like this: CleanupName, CheckName, UniqueName

February 10, 2017 at 07:40 am - Permalink

[quote=jtigor]

It has the form


Rename oldName, newName


[/quote]

 

Strange, but instead of the actual new name I'm getting the newName as the name of my renamed wave! What am I doing wrong? newName is a string type.  

 

Edit: ok I found the solution:

Rename oldName, $newName

 

 

 

 

February 5, 2020 at 12:25 am - Permalink