DC_READ_CONTAINER Function

Reads a single variable from an HP VEE Container file.

Usage

status = DC_READ_CONTAINER(filename, var_name)

Input Parameters

filename — A string containing the path name and filename of the Container file.

Output Parameters

var_name — The PV‑WAVE variable into which the Container file data is read. The appropriate type and dimension of var_name is set based on the data found in the Container file.

Returned Value

status — A value returned by DC_READ_CONTAINER indicating the success or failure of the container file read operation as follows:

< 0 — Indicates an error, such as an invalid filename or incorrect file format.
0 — Indicates a successful read.

Keywords

Double_Complex — All HP-VEE complex data types (Complex and PComplex) are pairs of double-precision floating point values. However, prior to PV‑WAVE 7.0, the only complex data type supported by PV‑WAVE was single precision. For compatibility with versions of PV‑WAVE prior to version 7.0, this function still returns Complex and PComplex as single precision complex by default. Specify the Double_Complex keyword to retain the precision of the HP-VEE data types and return a PV‑WAVE double-precision complex variable.

End_record — (scalar) Indicates the ending location of the desired variable within a multi-variable Container file.The keyword isn’t required, if only one variable is described within the Container file. Valid values for End_record can be obtained by calling DC_SCAN_CONTAINER.

Extent — Returns the extent value for the variable described in the Container file, if it exists.

Mapping — Returns the mapping value for the variable described in the Container file, if it exists.

Start_record — (scalar) Indicates the starting location of the desired variable within a multi-variable Container file. The keyword isn’t required, if only one variable is described within the Container file. Valid values for Start_record can be obtained by calling DC_SCAN_CONTAINER.

Discussion

HP VEE is Hewlett-Packard’s Visual Engineering Environment, a graphical programing language for creating test systems and solving engineering problems.

DC_READ_CONTAINER enables you to import data into PV‑WAVE from HP VEE. The Container file format is a proprietary HP ASCII file format which contains a header description of the enclosed data. PV‑WAVE reads this header information and creates a PV‑WAVE variable of the appropriate type and dimension to hold the enclosed data.

An HP VEE Container file is created in HP VEE by using the Write Container transaction in the To File object. Please refer to your HP VEE documentation for more information.

An HP VEE Container file contain one or more variable descriptions (see DC_SCAN_CONTAINER for a description of how to read Container files with multiple variables).

Example

In this example, sine is an undefined variable. DC_READ_CONTAINER resizes the variable sine to fit the container data.

status = DC_READ_CONTAINER(!Data_dir + 'hpvee_sine.con', sine)
INFO, sine
; PV-WAVE prints: SINE   DOUBLE = Array(256)
; View the sine data.
WzPlot, sine