iterating over selected sections

[stephanmg]

How can i translate

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forall for i=0,n3d()-1 fprint("%f %f %f %f\n", x3d(i), y3d(i), z3d(i), v(i)) 

to something like:

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for i=0, all-sections()
 for j =0, n3d() -1
fprint("%f %f %f %f\n", x3d(i), y3d(i), z3d(i), v(i)) 

Best regards,
Stephan

[hines]

I may not understand your question. If it refers to executing a multline string, then, sadly, that is not supported. I is often possible, though, to execute "load_file(\"filename.hoc\")"
that provides a number of functions easily callable from a single line.

if it refers to the details of 'for i=0, all-sections()', i'd refer you to SectionList and SectionRef in the documentation.
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/stati ... ectionList
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/stati ... SectionRef

[ted]

A question that may answer your question: are you just looking for hoc's syntax for creating compound statements? paired curly brackets?

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forall {
  for i=0,n3d()-1 {
    fprint("%f %f %f %f\n", x3d(i), y3d(i), z3d(i), v(i))
  }
}[/quote]You might find this helpful:
[url]http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/new_doc/programming/hocsyntax.html[/url]

[stephanmg]

Dear hines, dear ted,

I'm sorry, my question was misleading.

I know that i can iterate over all sections with the "forall" construct.

I tried to access a section by an index... let's say we have:

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objref all_sections
all_sections = new SectionList()
total_sections = 0
forall { all_sections.append() }
forall { total_sections = total_sections + 1 }

Now i want to do something like:

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j = 10

if (j < total_sections) {
   access all_sections[j];
   // do something
}

Could this be possible somehow?

All the best,
Stephan

[ted]

You could

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i = 0
forall {
  if (i<NUM) do whatever
  i+=1
}

If you're going to do this many times in the course of program execution, it might be faster to first set up a SectionList that contains just the first NUM sections e.g.

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objref first10
first10 = new SectionList()
i = 0
forall {
  if (i<10) first10.append()
  i+=1
}

Then you'll be able to

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forsec first10 whatever

It is an accident of the history of NEURON's evolution that sections were added to hoc before object oriented programming was added. This is why you can't simply append a section to a List, then use somelist.o(i) to refer to the i+1th section in somelist. But there is a workaround if you really must have indexed access to particular sections: make a List of SectionRefs.

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objref srlist
srlist = new List()
forall srlist.append(new SectionRef()) // for each section
  // create a new SectionRef that refers to that section
  // and append that SectionRef to srlist

Then
srlist.o(i) is the i+1st SectionRef in srlist
srlist.o(i).ref is the section to which that SectionRef refers
srlist.o(3).ref print secname() // prints the name of the 4th section, and

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for i = 2,5 srlist.o(i).ref {
  statements that refer to variables that belong to sections 3-6
}

Comment:
Referring to sections by index number is seldom necessary. Usually it is better to construct one or more custom SectionLists and iterate over their contents.

[stephanmg]

Ted,

thank you so much!
You just explained "my" workaround I was considering bad practice, which I already implemented exactly the way you are describing it!
Perfect, thanks for your affirmation.

And thanks again for your work and time supporting me.

NB: Another possibilty would be if i could globally index all points which were added by pt3dadd() -> since i'm using this (which seems to me that the points of each section have a local index within the section?):

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access section_of_interest
for i=0, n3d()-1 { 
  // do something 
}

All the best,
Stephan