Brain Imaging & Analysis Center

fScan supports several different types of internal variables. Values of some variables are global – they do not change when you move from one active window to another. Other variables are workspace or data set specific – their values will change depending on which window is currently active.

• Global variables
• User-defined variables
• Data-set variables
• Data-set string variables
• Data-set array variables

In general, data variable values can be accessed by specifying the name of the variable, preceded by the '$' character (or '_' character to make command-line scripting easier). To get the status of a variable, substitute '?' for '$'; the status is -1 if the named variable is not defined, it is 0 if it is defined but empty, and it is a positive value (the size of the variable) if it is defined and not empty.

Variable operators:

• $varbname - the value of the named variable (_varbname works the same)
• ?varbname - the status of the named variable (0=undefined, 1=defined)

For example:

• -echo Window: $thiswin WorkSpace $wsnum ; display name and workspace of current active window
• -echo Varb: ?curdir ?thiswin ?myvarb ; test whether these variables are defined

The '$' character is also used to identify fScan special functions of the form: $funcname(). Examples are:

• $exists(filename) - does the named file exist (0=no, 1=regular file, 2=directory)?
• $filepath(filename) - return the full path to the named file
• $relpath(filename) - return the relative path (from $curdir)
• $date(filename) - return a string containing the file modification date (yyyymmddhhmmss)
• $age(filename) - return the age of the named file in seconds

• tables
  • listitem
  • listflag

See Also:
Set, If, and Echo commands.
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