Igor print function working strangely

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To debug my code I have print statements which routinely spit out information about the data in each file, which I am analyzing in batch. The printing is being done inside a method being called from another method's for loop. Anomalously, it prints the information repeatedly, the number of times it does so being proportional to the index of the for loop.

Here is my question: is there some hidden functionality of the print function in Igor which makes it print repeatedly in some circumstances? Below is the code for reference, I've annotated in all caps relevant portions.

Function Curves(sublist, wName)//doesnt return anything, just adds values.
    String sublist
    wave wName
    variable i, numNeg = 5
    String label
    //THIS IS THE FOR LOOP WHERE, FOR EACH VALUE i, THERE SHOULD BE ONE THING PRINTED, BUT PRINTS i * some constant TIMES INSTEAD
    for(i = 0; i < numNeg; i+=1)
        wave current = $stringfromlist(i, sublist, "\r")
        label = num2str((i - 5) * 10)
        InsertPoints/M=1 DimSize(wName, 1), 1, wName
        InsertPoints/M=2 DimSize(wName, 2), 1, wName
        print "%%%%\r" + num2str(DimSize(wName, 0)) + "%%%%\r"
        //FUNCTION CALLED HERE
                wName[DimSize(wName, 0) - 1][i][]= FI(label, current)
        
    endfor
    
end
 
Function FI(label, current)
    String label
    wave current
    
    variable spikes, currentInjected, FI
    variable level = 0
    findLevels/DEST=levels/Q current, level
    
    spikes = numpnts(levels) / 2
    currentInjected = str2num(label)
    FI = spikes / currentInjected
        //CALLS PRINT HERE, BUT IT PRINTS REPEATEDLY, UP TO ~17 TIMES.
    print ("*********************\r" + nameofwave(current) + "- " + "\rFI: " + num2str(FI) + "\rspikes: " + num2str(spikes)  + "\rcurrent injected: " + num2str(currentInjected))
    return FI
end


Thank you all so much for your input.
Understand that a wave assignment statement, such as this:
wName[DimSize(wName, 0) - 1][i][]= FI(label, current)


evaluates the righthand side once for each element of the destination range. Thus, in this example, FI is called once for each element in the layers dimension (because of [] at the end on the right) and prints each time it is called.

If you need further help, try creating a self-contained, simplified procedure that illustrates the problem and which we can execute.

December 24, 2015 at 12:25 pm - Permalink

I see. So instead of leaving it blank, I changed wName[DimSize(wName, 0) - 1][i][]= FI(label, current) to this: wName[DimSize(wName, 0) - 1][i][0]= FI(label, current) and now it prints once per for loop iteration, which is what I wanted.

Thanks for your help!

December 24, 2015 at 02:05 pm - Permalink