Dave Mitchell's DigitalMicrograph™ Scripting Website

// Example script to show how to read from a text file. The text file is simply a file

// created in a simple text editor or a script window, where each line is delimited

// by a carriage return. Create a simple text file with several lines of numbers.

// Save the text file to the hard disk then open it with this script.

// version:20100426, v1.0

// D. R. G. Mitchell, v1.0, April 2010

// adminnospam@dmscripting.com (remove the nospam to make this work)

// It is necessary to open a file for reading (openfileforreading()) to read from it.

// It must also be closed at the conclusion of reading, otherwise

// it will not be released to other attempts to do anything with it.

// The Try/Catch routine should ensure that it is closed after any

// error. The readfileline() function will read the file line by line and return

// 1 for every line it reads successfully. It will return 0 at the

// end of the file and this is used to detect the end of file. For more information

// search for 'File Input and Output' in DMs online help.

// This technique is useful to either create a set of tags or a settings file which

// contain specific data. This is useful where quite large volumes of data need to be

// accessible to the script. Typing it in by hand would be very tiresome and error prone.

// It would also cause the script to become bloated and loading would be slow.

// For smaller volumes of data it may be more appropriate to create a self-contained

// script which has the data hard coded into statements which create the tags ie the

// script creates its own settings in the Global Info, rather than accessing data

// either installed during installation or by an installer script.

// variables

string path

number filereference

string thisline

// Select the file

if(!opendialog(path)) exit(0)

// Try/Catch to open the file for reading but close it in case of error.

try

{

filereference=openfileforreading(path)

number readok=1

// While ever the end of file has not been reached (readok=0) read the next line

// and output it to the results

while(readok==1)

{

readok=readfileline(filereference, thisline)

result("\n"+thisline)

}

}

catch // there was an error - close the file

{

closefile(filereference)

showalert("Sorry there was an error",2)

exit(0)

}

// The file read has concluded, close the file for reading.

closefile(filereference)