How to retrieve output keywords from Call_Procedure
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How to retrieve output keywords from Call_Procedure
Anonym Thursday, February 26, 2015
When working in IDL, often it will seem like doing something is just not possible. That is, until you talk to the right person who knows language tricks you never would have dreamed of. In my case that happened while I was working on our new ENVITask subclass for wrapping any IDL procedure. I wanted to use Call_Procedure to invoke it, but could not figure out how to get the values of output keywords from the procedure, so I had to resort to using the much more flexible but slower Execute() approach. Then I had a conversation with Adam Lefkoff, creator of the original version of ENVI and all around IDL guru, and he showed me a trick to take advantage of that works with Call_Procedure.
Let me step back a bit and describe the problem better before I demonstrate the solution. Let's say there is an IDL procedure that you want to call, but you have the names of the keywords as string literals instead of having a priori knowledge of them at compile time. Perhaps they come from a database or external source. You have two options for invoking this procedure: Execute and Call_Procedure:
pro testProcedure, FOO=foo, BAR=bar, _REF_EXTRA=refExtra
compile_opt idl2
help, foo, OUTPUT=fooOut
help, bar, OUTPUT=barOut
print, fooOut, barOut
if (ISA(refExtra)) then begin
foreach keyword, refExtra do begin
value = Scope_VarFetch(keyword, /REF_EXTRA)
help, value, OUTPUT=valueOut
print, keyword, valueOut
endforeach
endif
end
pro Execute_Wrapper, procName, _REF_EXTRA=refExtra
compile_opt idl2
params = Hash()
foreach keyword, refExtra do begin
params[keyword] = Scope_VarFetch(keyword, /REF_EXTRA)
endforeach
print, 'in Execute_Wrapper'
command = procName + ', _EXTRA=params.ToStruct()'
ret = Execute(command)
end
pro Call_Procedure_Wrapper, procName, _REF_EXTRA=refExtra
compile_opt idl2
params = Hash()
foreach keyword, refExtra do begin
params[keyword] = Scope_VarFetch(keyword, /REF_EXTRA)
endforeach
print, 'in Call_Procedure_Wrapper'
Call_Procedure, procName, _EXTRA=params.ToStruct()
end
pro test_procedure_wrapping
compile_opt idl2
Execute_Wrapper, 'testProcedure', FOO='foo', BAR=!pi, BAZ=List(1,2), QUX=Hash(1,2)
Call_Procedure_Wrapper, 'testProcedure', FOO='foo', BAR=!pi, BAZ=List(1,2), QUX=Hash(1,2)
end
The example might be a bit contrived, but it demonstrates how you Scope_VarFetch() each of the values in _REF_EXTRA and put them into a Hash object. The Hash is then converted to a struct when invoking the procedure, and by assigning that struct to the _EXTRA keyword it will connect all the keywords appropriately. We can see from the output that both Execute and Call_Procedure work:
in Execute_Wrapper
FOO STRING = 'foo'
BAR FLOAT = 3.14159
BAZ VALUE LIST
QUX VALUE HASH
in Call_Procedure_Wrapper
FOO STRING = 'foo'
BAR FLOAT = 3.14159
BAZ VALUE LIST
QUX VALUE HASH
The problem is that the procedure only has input keywords, no output keywords. If we want to be able to dynamically invoke a procedure that has output keywords, a little more effort is required. Here is the updated version of the Execute wrapper in action:
pro testProcedure, FOO=foo, BAR=bar, OUT_HASH=outHash, _REF_EXTRA=refExtra
compile_opt idl2
outHash = Hash('FOO', foo, 'BAR', bar)
if (ISA(refExtra)) then begin
foreach keyword, refExtra do begin
outHash[keyword] = Scope_VarFetch(keyword, /REF_EXTRA)
endforeach
endif
end
pro Execute_Wrapper, procName, OUT_NAMES=outNames, _REF_EXTRA=refExtra
compile_opt idl2
params = Hash()
foreach keyword, refExtra do begin
if (outNames.HasValue(keyword)) then continue
params[keyword] = Scope_VarFetch(keyword, /REF_EXTRA)
endforeach
print, 'in Execute_Wrapper'
command = procName + ', _EXTRA=params.ToStruct()'
foreach name, outNames do begin
command += ', ' + name.ToUpper() + '=' + name.ToLower()
endforeach
ret = Execute(command)
foreach name, outNames do begin
(Scope_VarFetch(name, /REF_EXTRA)) = Scope_VarFetch(name)
endforeach
end
pro test_procedure_wrapping
compile_opt idl2
execOutHash = 0
Execute_Wrapper, 'testProcedure', FOO='foo', BAR=!pi, BAZ=List(1,2), QUX=Hash(1,2), OUT_NAMES='OUT_HASH', OUT_HASH=execOutHash
print, execOutHash, /IMPLIED
end
The Execute_Wrapper routine now requires knowledge of which keywords in _REF_EXTRA are input and which are output. So when we construct the Hash we omit the output keywords, but then append them to the command string as new variables in the local scope. After invoking the procedure, these local variables will have the correct output values, but we need the very odd looking line with two calls to Scope_VarFetch() to copy them into the _REF_EXTRA bag to get them back out to the routine that called Execute_Wrapper. The Scope_VarFetch() call on the left uses the /REF_EXTRA keyword to connect with the callstack, but we need to encapsulate it in parentheses to make it an assignment operation. The Scope_VarFetch() call on the right is used to get the value of the named local variable for this assignment. We also need to make sure that the OUT_HASH keyword is present in the call to Execute_Wrapper so that this _REF_EXTRA trick will work.
While this is functional, it looks a little complicated and redundant with the OUT_HASH keyword repeated as a string literal. The other problem is that it is still using Execute(), which isn't as efficient as Call_Procedure. But we can't modify the Call_Procedure_Wrapper routine in the same manner and have success. The reason for this is that when the struct is built to pass into Call_Procedure it contains copies of the values of each keywords, not references to the variables used to build it. So we need to introduce a new function to get the output keyword values:
pro testProcedure, FOO=foo, BAR=bar, OUT_HASH=outHash, _REF_EXTRA=refExtra
compile_opt idl2
outHash = Hash('FOO', foo, 'BAR', bar)
if (ISA(refExtra)) then begin
foreach keyword, refExtra do begin
outHash[keyword] = Scope_VarFetch(keyword, /REF_EXTRA)
endforeach
endif
end
function Procedure_Wrapper, procName, _REF_EXTRA=refExtra
compile_opt idl2
Call_Procedure, procName, _EXTRA=refExtra
results = Hash()
foreach keyword, refExtra do begin
results[keyword] = Scope_Varfetch(keyword, /REF_EXTRA)
endforeach
return, results
end
pro Call_Procedure_Wrapper, procName, OUT_NAMES=outNames, _REF_EXTRA=refExtra
compile_opt idl2
params = Hash()
foreach keyword, refExtra do begin
params[keyword] = Scope_VarFetch(keyword, /REF_EXTRA)
endforeach
print, 'in Call_Procedure_Wrapper'
results = Procedure_Wrapper(procName, _EXTRA=params.ToStruct())
foreach name, outNames do begin
(Scope_VarFetch(name, /REF_EXTRA)) = results[name]
endforeach
end
pro test_procedure_wrapping
compile_opt idl2
callOutHash = 0
Call_Procedure_Wrapper, 'testProcedure', FOO='foo', BAR=!pi, BAZ=List(1,2), QUX=Hash(1,2), OUT_NAMES='OUT_HASH', OUT_HASH=callOutHash
print, callOutHash, /IMPLIED
end
This new function behaves similarly to the modified Execute_Wrapper routine, but since it passes all of its keywords through to Call_Procedure it uses references not values. It can then use Scope_VarFetch(/REF_EXTRA) to copy the values from those keywords into a Hash that it returns to its caller. In there we again use Scope_VarFetch(/REF_EXTRA) to copy the output values from that Hash into the variables from its calling routine. The use of the OUT_NAMES keyword is not completely necessary, but it avoids copying input variables back to the caller, which may or may not be expensive.
In the ENVITask context, we know which keywords are inputs and which are outputs, so instead of passing in the OUT_NAMES keyword and returning a Hash of value we can make Procedure_Wrapper a member function and set the output parameter values directly. But as you'll see in ENVI 5.2 SP1 we can wrap any IDL procedure that uses keywords in an ENVITaskFromProcedure object that knows how to map input and output keywords to ENVITaskParameters for you automatically.
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