Hi Daran,
You should be able to set a string variable (within your NCL script) to
the name of the file you want to process. e.g.,
file1 = systemfunc("date +%Y%m%d%H")+"_surface.dat"
surface_dat = asciiread(file1,(/1000,5/),"float")
Or, if you need to do something more complicated, you can get the year, month,
day, and hour as separate (integer) variables, e.g.,
day1 = stringtoint(systemfunc("date +%d"))
hour1 = stringtoint(systemfunc("date +%H"))
and form the filename yourself.
--Larry
On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Daran L. Rife wrote:
> Hi Group,
> 
> I have a question regarding running NCL commands in batch mode.  I'd like
> to create an NCL script that is called from the cron.  The NCL script reads
> ASCII data.  The ASCII data file name changes dynamically as wall clock
> time progresses -- in this case the file name contains a pseudo-Unix time
> stamp which indicates the valid time of the data.  
> 
> For example, at 1000 UTC a file named 2000091810_surface.dat exists on my
> system (it contains surface data from 1000 UTC).  I'd like my NCL script
> (called from the cron) to plot this data.  Then at 1100 UTC a file named
> 2000091811_surface.dat exits (containing surface data from 1100 UTC) --
> I'd like to automatically plot this data too, and so on. 
> 
> I've looked at the GSUN guide examples, and played around a bit with NCL
> itself.  It seems as though the only way I can get my NCL script to
> recognize dynamically changing file names, is to generate a 'wrapper'
> script which dynamically creates appropriate file names/locations, then
> sets an environment variable indicating the location of the file.  For
> example, here's some pseudo-code from a wrapper script:
> 
> 
> 	get system date
> 
> 	create file name/location string from system date
> 
> 	setenv $FILE_LOCATION
> 
>  	   ncl < my_ncl_script.ncl
> 
> 	unsetenv $FILE_LOCATION
> 
> 
> Then in my NCL script I have an asciiread call that looks like:
> 
>        surface_dat = asciiread($FILE_LOCATION,(/1000,5/),"float")
> 
> 
> 
> Is there a better option than what I've described above?
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for your time,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daran
> 
> __________________________________________________________________
> 
> Daran L. Rife
> 
> Associate Scientist
> 
> National Center for Atmospheric Research
> Research Applications Program
> P.O. Box 3000 
> Boulder CO,  80307-3000
> 
> 303.497.8398
> 
> drife@ucar.edu
> __________________________________________________________________
> 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Larry W. Horowitz             phone: (609) 452-6520
GFDL/NOAA                     fax: (609) 987-5063
P.O. Box 308, Princeton Univ. home page: http://www.asp.ucar.edu/~larryh/
Princeton, NJ 08542-0308      email: larryh@ucar.edu or lwh@gfdl.gov
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