Art Frank writes:

> I'm writing a command file that would accept input from a file and from the
> keyboard.
...
> What I have is a file containing a list of filenames to process.  I want to
> read in a filename, ask a few questions about it, process the file, and read
> in the next filename.

While not the most efficient technique in general, a message file should work
nicely here.

The idea is to send your list of filenames to a message file (you know, with
CODE=MSG, so that each read is destructive, deleting the just-read record).
Then you could use a redirected :INPUT to read from the msg file, and a
separate :INPUT to read from the keyboard.

A sample code framework is this:

        # load message file "msgfile" (code=MSG) with filenames,
        # then...
        #
        while not finfo( "msgfile","eof" )
           #
           input filename < msgfile
           input a1; prompt="Prompt 1:"
           input a2; prompt="Prompt 2:"
           #
           # process here
           #
        endwhile

Regarding the previous comment about this technique's relative inefficiency,
it's because MPE must open/read/close msgfile each time its :INPUT statement
is executed.


Incidentally, I don't know how you're loading the list of filenames,
but if it's something that can be done via :listfile, you can use

        build msgfile; temp; code=msg; rec=-254,1,v,ascii
        file  msgfile,oldtemp; dev=disc
        listfile @.data,6 > *msgfile

or something similar.

--Glenn

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