[Swift-devel] [Bug 291] New: Add a exists() function to test for file existence

[John Dennis]

Michael,

	This type of function would be great to have.

John
On Apr 1, 2011, at 11:51 AM, Michael Wilde wrote:

> Basically as far as I understand: the presence or absence of a  
> particular data file within the inout dataset is to be used to  
> determine whether the code to process that dataset subsection gets  
> invoked or not:
>
>  if (exists("extra.data")) {
>     DataFile extraInput<"extra.data">;
>     extraResult = analyze(extraInput);
>  }
>
> The above is my assumption based on a phone call.  We can and should  
> verify the assumption with a simple example.
>
> I also thought we can try this today by seeing if extraInput can be  
> an array, mapped to zero items if nothing to do and 1 item if  
> something to do.  That would at least let us test the use case.
>
> John, can you verify if the example Swift lines above are what you  
> are looking for here?
>
> - Mike
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> On Fri, 2011-04-01 at 10:51 -0500, Michael Wilde wrote:
>>
>>> - we should first verify that exists() will solve the NCAR need in a
>>> sufficiently clean way
>>
>> I think this is important. Can we get a description of the problem
>> instead of a (otherwise) random proposal for a solution?
>
> -- 
> Michael Wilde
> Computation Institute, University of Chicago
> Mathematics and Computer Science Division
> Argonne National Laboratory
>