reading data from an external text file

[NaughtyNathan]

the fopen docs won't help you at all, but if you look at the fgetline command the examples there should tell you all you need to know. However, this exact topic has come up at least twice in recent memory, do a CGTalk search and you'll be bound to find it.

here's one to get you started:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=7&t=900922&highlight=text+file

:nathaN

[thegarland]

That code did exactly what I wanted. Thanks.

[thegarland]

That was just what I needed. Thanks.

One other thing, in addition to xyz coordinates, I also want to include a couple other items of info about each star (name, spectral class, etc) in the data file, and I want to rename the star object to include these bits of info.

for example, a typical line in the data file would read:

1, Proxima_Centauri, M5Ve, 15.4, 0.9, -0.9, 0

Here is the code that I have so far. I've added additional variables for the other items in the data file.

{
//open file to read
string $filename = "c:/data.txt";
int $fileId = `fopen $filename "r"`;

//prevents Maya from hanging if file doesn't exist
if (!`filetest -f $filename`) error "Specified File not Found!";

//repeat following loop until end of file is reached
while (!`feof $fileId`)
{
string $nextLine = `fgetline $fileId`;
// tokenize the line
string $tokens[];
tokenize $nextLine ", " $tokens;
float $h = $tokens[0];
float $d = $tokens[1];
float $sp = $tokens[2];
float $mg = $tokens[3];
float $x = $tokens[4];
float $y = $tokens[5];
float $z = $tokens[6];

//duplicate star object
duplicate -rr;

//rename object with data
rename "star_01" "star_" + $h + "_" + $d + "_" + $sp + "_" + $mg;

//move it to the coordinates
move $x $y $z;
}
fclose $fileId;
}
// end of code

The result I'm trying for is star_01 is renamed...

star_1_Proxima_Centauri_M5Ve_15.4

...but instead, I 'm getting a syntax error.

I think it's because I'm not tokenizing those other items correctly. If so, what is the correct way? :shrug:

[NaughtyNathan]

always put brackets around your string catenations.

rename "pSphere1" ("star_" + $h + "_" + $d + "_" + $sp + "_" + $mg);:nathaN

[thegarland]

Thanks. That solved part of the problem. But now I'm discovering that Maya is not reacting well to spaces in the star names. Sometimes it will simply replace the space with an underscore. But other times, like when there is a single letter after the name (Rigel Kentaurus B, for example), Maya doesn't know what to do with it, and sometimes converts it to a zero.

Is there a way that I can get Maya to automatically convert any spaces to underscores? I would just change them in the data file, but there are over 80,000 stars, so that's not really a good option.

[NaughtyNathan]

I'm not really sure how you are getting the names, I assumed that $d / $token[1] was the name, but in your previous code this is declared as a float?.

Anyway, you've got the name as a string somehow I take it? (e.g. "Rigel Kentaurus B") so you just need to use the substituteAllString command:

string $newName = `substituteAllString $name " " "_"`;:nathaN

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