Ascii Xyz -> Array Of Vectors

[loquat149]

I have some space-delimited ASCII data generated from another program that provides a triplet of x y z coordinates per line. I need a MEL procedure that will read in this data and return an array of vectors. Before I potentially re-invent the wheel here, is there any code available that already does this?

Thanks,
Dave

[gmask]

well you could import it as a MOV file but that assigns the values as keyframe data.

movIn Imports a .mov file into animation curves connected to the listed attributes.

[loquat149]

Okay, after struggling for hours with eval, I came up with this which seems to do the trick...apparently eval is not even necessary:

[codebox]// Global Procedure: f_arrayVector
// - create an array of vectors from XYZ ASCII data
//
// USAGE: f_arrayVector($fname);
//

//-----Example:-----
// source f_arrayVector;
// $data = f_arrayVector("/Users/loquat149/Documents/maya/projects/Dave/data/xyz.dat");

//-----Notes:-----
// On the Mac, data files need to be saved with linefeeds (LF) so the FGETLINE
// command can parse lines.

// -----Author:-----
// by loquat149, May-2008

global proc vector[] f_arrayVector(string $fname) {

// Declare variables:
vector $data[];

// Open file for reading:
int $fileId = `fopen $fname "r"`;

// Loop until reaching the end of the file:
int $n = 0;
while( !feof($fileId) ) {
	// Get one line at at time:	
	string $line = `fgetline $fileId`;

	// Parse columns (space-delimited):
	string $xyz[] = stringToStringArray($line, " ");
	
	// Check the input on 1st iteration:
	if ($n==0) {
		if (size($xyz)!=3) {
		error "Input file doesn't have 3 columns!";
		}
	}
	
	// Build command string:
	string $cmd= ("<<" + $xyz[0] + "," + $xyz[1] + "," + $xyz[2] +  ">>;" );	

	// Add vector to array:
	$data[$n] = ($cmd);
	
	$n++; // increment counter
}

// Close the file:
fclose $fileId;

// Return array of vectors:
return $data;

};

[/codebox]

Suggestions for improvements are welcome,
Dave