Grads scripting language

[Davide Sacchetti]

actually I used and still use grads scripting for complicated task
(mainly on unix/linux systems). My opinion is that the language is
definetively stable, it's a bit poor language but enough powerful for
applications on grid data sets.
Hints are: pay attention not to insert tabs (^I) in your scripts (be
careful: some editor, also vi, could insert a tab at some level of
identation), leave a blank line at EOF for windows environment, comments
must start with a * or # at first column ... if you respect these hints
your script should never freeze.
bye bye
Davide

On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 10:00 +0100, Davide Sotil Bertanzetti wrote:
> >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.
--
Sacchetti Davide
ARPAL UO3 Centro Meteo Idrologico Regione Liguria - Dir. Scientifica
P.za Vittoria 15 16121 Genova (I)
tel: +39 010 6437535
mail: davide.sacchetti at arpal.org   web: www.meteoliguria.it