Variable Population From Text File?

[MaritimeGirl]

If I have three global variables, let's say...

$varA

$varB

$varC

and I have a really long script (hour execution time) that I want to be able to fail gracefully to allow for immediate restarting after fixing the origin of the problem without having to hardcode a bunch of debugging/temporary code at the start.

I have error handling where if a catastrophic error occurs, I want the script to "dump" the global variable contents to a text file from that moment in time. Then, when I restart, I want the script to read in those values from the dump file and repopulate my global variables to what they were. Essentially, I suppose I'm attempting to create rudimentary "sessions" with AutoIt using some sort of Reflection like in Java. Yes, I know I'm asking a lot of AutoIt

So, if my dump file contains...

varA:15

varB=ABC

varC=green

My script should look for a dump file and if found, populate the variables. I have the code written to do all of the above except I'm using a case statement (which isn't dynamic since it's all hardcoded) to populate each of the variables if found.

Any ideas/suggestions?

[BrewManNH]

Look at the IniRead and Assign functions that might be of some help. You'd need to change the format of your dump file slightly to have the sections that an ini file would need but that shouldn't be hard to do.

[MaritimeGirl]

Thank you! Assign() was the missing piece! I did convert my dump file to be an ini file and the sections will lend themselves perfectly to the 40 or so scripts I will have instead of 40 different dump files. So, now is there is any way to iterate through the global variables to grab the variable name strings so that I can create the key/value pairs in the ini file?

[BrewManNH]

Well, instead of individual variables, you could use an array and save each value to the ini in a simple For/Next loop.

[MaritimeGirl]

Individual or array, no difference, it's getting the list of keys that's the problem. I want to make this a dynamic function to save all currently declared Global variables. IsDeclared helps a bit but it seems I have to do a bunch of statements in the function - it's not pretty and I'd rather not have to trust other coders to make sure they add a list of all of their Global variables in my sample code below:

Local $pairs = ""

if isDeclared("varA") Then $pairs = $pairs & "varA=" & $varA & @LF

.... hundreds more if lines here...

IniWriteSection($fileName, $sectionName, $pairs)

I'd love to use an array for $pairs but I've looked and can't find a function that would extract the list of key/value pairs of Global variables from the in progress script.

[czardas]

I don't get this at all. The code you posted is strange.Does the variable $pairs becoming a multi-line monster in the part where it says .. "hundreds more if lines here." ? You say you would love $pairs to be an array, but it's clearly a string, that's confusing. Why can't you use an array? Then you just would have one variable to worry about right? Also I wonder what is causing the errors.

Edited April 11, 2012 by czardas

[Artisan]

Why not use the Execute function instead? Your dump could be a list of all existing global variable names and values and when you restart it, you can use Execute to load them back in. Just make sure to format the dump like an .au3 file. And like czardas said, an array is your best bet for this. (Tip: Use the [0] entry to track how many variables you've got.)

[MaritimeGirl]

czardas, what errors? I never said I had any errors happening. Yes, indeed, it does become a multiline monster which is what I don't want to have to do. Don't blame me for the confusion for delimited string vs array, as here is the function definition from the documentation for iniWriteSection:

IniWriteSection ( "filename", "section", "data" [, index] )

data The data to write. The data can either be a string or an array. If the data is a string, then each key=value pair must be delimited by @LF. If the data is an array, the array must be 2-dimensional and the second dimension must be 2 elements.

Artisan, I'm not sure how Execute could help since that would still require a messy manually maintained list of the Global variables, just moved into an include file. See above for string vs array argument - I want an array. Going back to my last post's last line... "I can't find a function that would extract the list of key/value pairs of Global variables from the in progress script."

[Reg2Post]

Perhaps, you could write the Global variables to the ini file after they are used in your script but also checking to see if a value exists in the ini file before declaring them.

Yes you may have a lot of lines of code to add depending on how may Global vars you are using but I am following this thread to see if there really is a native function (or shared UDF) to pull all the declared Global vars into an array.

[Artisan]

MaritimeGirl, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're dealing with an unknown number of global variables that you want to be able to record to file (variable name & value) in the event of error handling. Do you have control over the variable names? If so, then it's a trivial matter to throw it all in a single array instead - you wouldn't even need the variable names then. You would only have to output values of the array, which you could load back in again later. If you have no control over the names of the variables, then I think you're stuck. At least I would be.

[MaritimeGirl]

Artisan, correct. I'm not the person writing all of the code, so I'm not in control of what gets declared in each of the 40 or so scripts we have to write.