status = fdescribe ( variable , fileHandle ) ;
list variable
- A variable or value of any type.
handle fileHandle
- A file handle obtained from the fopen() function.
str status
- $ACKNOWLEDGE
The fdescribe function was successful.
The STATUS variable is set to $ACKNOWLEDGE
%ARGUMENT : Invalid arguments. Usage: status = fdescribe ( variable , fileHandle ) ;
The describe functions are a means to both display and store variable data.
- describe displays the variable to stdout
- fdescribe displays the variable into a file
- sdescribe displays the variable into another variable
- xdescribe displays the variable to stdout in XML format
- xfdescribe displays the variable into a file in XML format
- xsdescribe displays the variable into another variable in XML format
When a variable is described, it is explicit. For example, the assignment:
a = 1 ;when described, ie; "describe a", is always explicit:
list 'a' = { 1 } ;In another example, the assignment
a.b.c = 1 ;when described, is also explicit:
list a = { list b = { list c = { 1 } }} ;The xdescribe function is for generating XML (or HTML). For example:
list html = { list body = { list h1 = "A story", list p = { "The rain in spain" }, list a = { attr ref="http://www.raininspain.com/", "Press here" } } } ; xdescribe html ;<html> <body> <h1> A story </h1> <p> The rain in spain </p> <a ref="http://www.raininspain.com/"> Press here </a> </body></html>
The xfdescribe() and fdescribe() functions are useful for storage and retrieval of variables. For example:
h = fopen ( "mydata.dat", 'w" ) ;fdescribe ( data, h ) ;fclose ( h ) ;.....later read back the 'data'..h = fopen ( "mydata.dat", "r" ) ;line = fgets ( h ) ;*line ; // Restore 'data'fclose ( h ) ;The fdescribe and xfdescribe functions also work in conjunction with the parse and xparse functions. For example, the above section of code to re-read the 'data' variable could also be accomplished by:
parse ( "mydata.dat" ) ;The xparse function can be used to read an entire html page or a segment of an html page and then display it. For example. this " Description " section comes from a separate document that was read using the xparse() function.
xparse ( "describe.htm" ) ;xdescribe ( html.body ) ;
describe , sdescribe , xdescribe , xfdescribe , xsdescribe