Grads scripting language

[Davide Sotil Bertanzetti]

>On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Tom Pollard wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Thanks for all of the quick responses.
>>
>> On Jan 31, 2006, at 3:00 PM, Jennifer Adams wrote:
>> > Take a look at http://www.iges.org/grads/gadoc/gsf.html
>> > You have to tweak a few things in your scripts, but this capability
>> > allows you to call your own library of small functions.
>>
>> Ok, I didn't know about this.  It's no exactly what I had in mind,
>> but it looks much better than nothing.
>>
>> > On Jan 31, 2006, at 2:51 PM, Tom Pollard wrote:
>> >> If I can ask a provocative question, are people really happy with the
>> >> scripting language?  I started to work on writing some scripts last
>> >> year and found the language to be very limiting in a number of ways.
>> >> The main thing that bothered me was that didn't seem to be possible
>> >> to load one script from another, which prevents you from building up
>> >> libraries of reusable functions.  Has anyone considered using Tcl or
>> >> Python as an alternative scripting language?  If so, I'd love to help
>> >> work on this, in my (admittedly limited) free time.
>> It sounds like the answer is "no" - no one else is interested in
>> trying to integrate Tcl or Python as a scripting language for Grads?
>>
>> Tom
>>

Hello.

I like this subject. I would like to comment 2 problems I have found when
making grads scripts, because I am not sure if the cause is how I wrote them
or if there are some grads known scripting limitations.

1-Has anyone found some problems when using looping constructs?. I have
found "segment faults" when nesting some while...endwhile looping constructs
with a sufficiently elevated number of iterations. I solved the problem
making a linux shell program to externally control some of the loops, so
GRADS hadn't to execute so much iterations.

2-Has anyone found some problems with smooth program execution?. I mean, in
my scripts, sometimes, without a clear cause, the program seems to freeze at
a point apparently doing nothing (at a "say" statement for an example). I
solved the problem using linux shell and/or FORTRAN and making GRADS to
execute just the minimal operations.

I have been programming (or fighting) with grads scripting language
approximately for about a year and my sensations are that this language
seems to be good just for really minimal operations but "unstable" and not
so efficient for more complicated tasks,  compared to linux shell and
FORTRAN scripts. Maybe I'm wrong, is there someone who has this feelings or
I am the only one?.

Any comment will be appreciated, thanks!


Davide Sotil Bertanzetti.