Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
Substituting multiple strings into a program
I believe the topic may be a bit confusing, so I'll try to describe what I wish to do here. You'll have to forgive me if I don't use the correct terminology as I'm not exactly skilled in any sort of programming. What I want to do is get individual strings of text from a file and place them into a program, run that program, and then repeat the program with the next string of text in the file. For example, say I have a file titled "DogNames" that has a list of names of dogs (Rex, Cherry, Sniffles, Captain Kevin the V, etc.). I have a set of text documents with data corresponding to each name. The text documents are titled according to which dog the data is from (data on Rex is titled Rex, data from Cherry is titled Cherry, etc.) The data is columns of information. I have a program already that calls for the user to input the name of a file to draw data from and what name to give the graph it spits out. I'd like to be able to have the program read a list of names and, since they directly correspond to file names, be able to sub in each name into the program I already wrote and spit out a graph with the same name. I can do the latter (naming the graphs), but the former is what I'm unsure about. I know what I want to do (read name1, insert into program, produce graph, read name2, insert into program, etc...), but don't know what commands to use or even the appropriate syntax. Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated.