help automating 'read in process' and general automating help

Hi all,

I need to read in anywhere from 200 to 36000 ascii files and convert
them into .sav files. I was looking for some help in running a script
to do this.

I've been using this method (below), but it is far too time consuming
with this many files.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IDL> table = read_ascii('g:\Mars_tectonics\10deg _analysis
\a6.txt',template=ascii_template('g:\Mars_tectonic s\10deg _analysis
\a6.txt'))

IDL> help,table,/structure
** Structure <1229360>, 3 tags, length=300, data length=300, refs=1:
FIELD1 INT Array[30]
FIELD2 FLOAT Array[30]
FIELD3 FLOAT Array[30]
IDL> a6=fltarr(3,30)
IDL> a6[0,*]=table.field1
IDL> a6[1,*]=table.field2
IDL> a6[2,*]=table.field3
save,a6,filename='g:\mars_tectonics\10deg _analysis\a6.sav'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They'll mostly be of this format and the naming convention is A-R and
1-16 (for this smaller iteration).
This is important: if no file is found, i need it to create an array
of 0's.
Eventually, perhaps the end of this week, I'll need to work this
reading method into my actual computational program, but that's a
little bit later.

As an aside, does anyone know of a way/program/code that'll automate
the conversion of dbase files to ASCII? I have a program now that does
it, but it only does one at a time and adds odd characters that I then
must go in to manually delete.... Time consuming...

Thanks,
~Matt

On Aug 22, 9:33*pm, mbwel...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I need to read in anywhere from 200 to 36000 ascii files and convert
> them into .sav files. I was looking for some help in running a script
> to do this.
>
> I've been using this method (below), but it is far too time consuming
> with this many files.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> IDL> table = read_ascii('g:\Mars_tectonics\10deg _analysis
> \a6.txt',template=ascii_template('g:\Mars_tectonic s\10deg _analysis
> \a6.txt'))
>
> IDL> help,table,/structure
> ** Structure <1229360>, 3 tags, length=300, data length=300, refs=1:
> * *FIELD1 * * * * *INT * * * Array[30]
> * *FIELD2 * * * * *FLOAT * * Array[30]
> * *FIELD3 * * * * *FLOAT * * Array[30]
> IDL> a6=fltarr(3,30)
> IDL> a6[0,*]=table.field1
> IDL> a6[1,*]=table.field2
> IDL> a6[2,*]=table.field3
> save,a6,filename='g:\mars_tectonics\10deg _analysis\a6.sav'
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> They'll mostly be of this format and the naming convention is A-R and
> 1-16 (for this smaller iteration).
> *This is important: if no file is found, i need it to create an array
> of 0's.
> Eventually, perhaps the end of this week, I'll need to work this
> reading method into my actual computational program, but that's a
> little bit later.
>
> As an aside, does anyone know of a way/program/code that'll automate
> the conversion of dbase files to ASCII? I have a program now that does
> it, but it only does one at a time and adds odd characters that I then
> must go in to manually delete.... Time consuming...
>
> Thanks,
> ~Matt

READCOL in the IDL Astronomy User's library might be useful for
reading them in. And FILE_SEARCH would also be useful for figuring out
if a given file exists or not.

-Jeremy.

Thanks for the response, I have another question though.

For the

IDL> help,table,/structure
** Structure <1229360>, 3 tags, length=300, data length=300, refs=1:
FIELD1 INT Array[*]
FIELD2 FLOAT Array[*]
FIELD3 FLOAT Array[*]
IDL> a6=fltarr(3,*)


How might I set it up so that the * in the array automaticaly becomes
placed in the fltarr? i.e. if: array[30] then automatically place 30
into fltarr such that fltarr(3,30).
The table structure is throwing me off.

Thanks,
Matt

On Aug 25, 4:46*am, mbwel...@gmail.com wrote:
> Thanks for the response, I have another question though.
>
> For the
>
> IDL> help,table,/structure
> ** Structure <1229360>, 3 tags, length=300, data length=300, refs=1:
> * *FIELD1 * * * * *INT * * * Array[*]
> * *FIELD2 * * * * *FLOAT * * Array[*]
> * *FIELD3 * * * * *FLOAT * * Array[*]
> IDL> a6=fltarr(3,*)
>
> How might I set it up so that the * in the array automaticaly becomes
> placed in the fltarr? i.e. if: array[30] then automatically place 30
> into fltarr such that fltarr(3,30).
> *The table structure is throwing me off.
>
> Thanks,
> Matt

a6 = Transpose( [ [Table.Field1], [Table.Field2], [Table.Field3] ] )

Search for the array concatenation tutorial on
http://www.dfanning.com

Regards,
Chris

On Aug 25, 11:40*am, Spon <christoph.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 25, 4:46*am, mbwel...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Thanks for the response, I have another question though.
>
> > For the
>
> > IDL> help,table,/structure
> > ** Structure <1229360>, 3 tags, length=300, data length=300, refs=1:
> > * *FIELD1 * * * * *INT * * * Array[*]
> > * *FIELD2 * * * * *FLOAT * * Array[*]
> > * *FIELD3 * * * * *FLOAT * * Array[*]
> > IDL> a6=fltarr(3,*)
>
> > How might I set it up so that the * in the array automaticaly becomes
> > placed in the fltarr? i.e. if: array[30] then automatically place 30
> > into fltarr such that fltarr(3,30).
> > *The table structure is throwing me off.
>
> > Thanks,
> > Matt
>
> a6 = Transpose( [ [Table.Field1], [Table.Field2], [Table.Field3] ] )
>
> Search for the array concatenation tutorial onhttp://www.dfanning.com
>
> Regards,
> Chris- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

I guess the actual answer to your question is that you should be able
to get array sizes out of the structure like this:
NCols = N_Elements(Table.Field1)

My solution just skips that bit and joins up the structure fields into
one array, automatically converting the int column to floats in the
process.