Suggesting a path for loading waves

Hello guys..

I did a procedure a long time ago, to load waves from a folder. The procedure is working fine, but with time my amount of date is getting bigger with loads of folders and subfolders. So it is a nightmare for me select the correct folder in the middle of the mess.

The good thing is that 90% of the times I need the waves that are always in the same folder, so I would like to know if is possible to suggest this folder as DEFAULT folder for that window that appear asking selection.

I've tryed to define newpath/o temporarypath, path , but when I do that, the selecting window does not appear...

So, is there any way to suggest that?



function loadfit() 
    string filename=""                             
    string pathname=""

    newpath/o temporaryPath
        if (v_flag!=0)
            return -1
        endif
    pathname= "temporarypath"

        /// Proceed to the loading waves from the selected folder!
You are not writing clearly what you want to do and where exactly lies your problem (What selection window you are talking about? Are the folder in Igor or on your hard disk? What steps are involved? etc.), so I can only try to provide a general hint.
- If it's Igor folders you are talking about, then moving the little red arrow to the left of the folder symbol in the Data Browser will set a folder (where the arrow is pointing to) to the starting folder for functions and dialog windows within Igor.
- If you are talking about folders in Windows (or Mac?), then usually saving a file from within Igor will set this folder as starting point for future save and load dialogs. Unfortunately, I don't know another way of triggering this behavior without saving involved.
Precise information would be good...
In the meantime maybe you want to have a look at the /P flag from loadwave:
displayhelptopic "loadwave"


HJ
If you use LoadWave/P and pass "" as the file name it will point the Open File dialog to the folder associated with /P.

Okay Guys.. I will try to explain a bit better! Sorry for that.. that's what happens when a non english speaker have to write in a rush !

First of all, I have a procedure that I wrote a long time ago for loading WAVES from TXT files inside any windows folder! The procedure works really fine, and that's not wrong with it... I just would like to make my life easy by saving time selecting the correct folder.

I have my data saved something as this:

Procedure
C:\Procedure Folder\File.ipf

TXT file for loading waves
C:\Folder\SubFolder\SubFolder\SubFolder\SubFolder\............\SubFolder\Myfiles.txt


So, everytime that I use my procedure appears a window asking me to choose a folder to load the files from... and the selected folder at the window is always the Procedure's Folder!
Once 90% of the times I have to load files from the same folder, I was wondering if is possible to tell Igor to use that path as a initial choice instead of the procedure folder!

Hope you guys understand now!

Thanks again

Andre

Sorry it's late so just a few snippets from some bulky code:
    Open /R /P=CalDataPath /F=TempString RefNum as FileNameOpen
...
    String OpenPath=S_FileName
    LoadWave /O/A /B=("C=1,F=0,N=CalData; C=1,F=0,N=QMSData;") /J /Q S_FileName
...
    NewPath /O /Q CalDataPath RemoveEnding(OpenPath,S_FileName)


Please ignore the details - You just want to use newpath with the path from the open dialogue. Be aware if s_filename carries a path or not in your procedure.
(In this example I'm first loading a header and afterwards the two waves)
HJ
andreponzoni wrote:

So, everytime that I use my procedure appears a window asking me to choose a folder to load the files from... and the selected folder at the window is always the Procedure's Folder!


This sounds like you want to have the path available when you run your procedure in a new experiment. If this is the case, you will need to hard code the file path in your procedure possibly using Strconstant or use SavePackagePreferences & LoadPackagePreferences to save the path to the computer's hard disk. The latter is more complex, but offers the ability to update the saved path. There is a WaveMetrics example experiment for the latter technique that can be loaded from the File menu: File > Example Experiments > Programming >Package Preferences Demo.