Using variables in object names with select

[scourge]

Just wondered if anyone could help a newbie who's having a bit of trouble with syntax.

I'm trying to write a MEL script which selects one of ten maya cylinders (named pCylinder1-10). The cylinders are stacked in three piles and I only want to ever select the top one from any pile (yes its that towers of hanoi thing) and move it from one stack to another.

What I really want to do is have each stack stored as an array, the size of which is equal to the number of disks in that stack. The values in the array would correspond to the size of the disks. Moving a disk from one stack to another is simply a case of appending one array and chopping the last value of the other.

However, in order for this process to work I've got to be able to be able to tell MEL to only ever select the top disk in any stack. I tried doing it this way;

select -r pCylinder$array[$count]

$count being an integer equal to the size of the array so that it's always the last value in the array thats selected. Maya really didn't like the syntax though.

Can anyone tell me the correct syntax that lets you use variables inside object names when you use the select command? Or is what i'm trying to do impossible?

Thanks!

[failure]

Use eval function if you need to build mel commands from variables. Eval converts strings into commands. So, to select cylinder whose number you've stored in var:

$n = 3;
eval( "select -r pCylinder" + $n );

In your specific case (if I got it right what you want to acomplish) that would be:

eval( "select -r pCylinder" + $array[ $count ] );

Ehm, I just can't understand why in the world would somebody want to write hanoi thingie in mel

[bentneuron]

I would use two arrays, one that stores the cylinder's name and another that stores its size.

Why not actually find the "topmost" cylinder by querying its coordinates?

string $cylinderListOne[] = {"pCylinder1", "pCylinder2", "pCylinder3"};
float $maxY = 0;
string $topMostCyl;
float $topMostSize;
for ($n in $cylinderListOne)
{
float $coords[] = xform -q -ws -rp;
if ($coords[1] > $maxY)
{
$maxY = $coords[$1];
$topMostCyl = $n;
$topMostSize = ($n + ".radius");
}
}

[scourge]

cool, that helps. thanks both of you.

spent most of today struggling with passing arrays into procedures. it says "error; number of arguments on call to moveDisks doesn't match number of parameters in procedure definition" even though they definately match. moveDisks is the name of the function.

gave up after 4 hours and watched mulholland drive on tv. David Lynch is a G.