octave-miscellaneous 1.0.11-1 / usr / share / octave / packages / 3.2 / miscellaneous-1.0.11 / slurp_file.m

## Copyright (C) 2002 Etienne Grossmann.  All rights reserved.
##
## This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
## under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
## Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
## later version.
##
## This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
## ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
## FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
## for more details.

## -*- texinfo -*-
## @deftypefn{Function File} {@var{s} = } slurp_file ( f ) 
## @cindex  
## slurp_file return a whole text file @var{f} as a string @var{s}.
##
## @var{f} : string : filename
## @var{s} : string : contents of the file
##
## If @var{f} is not an absolute filename, and 
## is not an immediately accessible file, slurp_file () 
## will look for @var{f} in the path.
## @seealso{}
## @end deftypefn

## Author  : Etienne Grossmann <etienne@cs.uky.edu>
function s = slurp_file (f)

if ! ischar (f),  error ("slurp_file :  f  is not a string"); end
if isempty (f), error ("slurp_file :  f  is empty"); end

s = "";

f0 = f;
[st,err,msg] = stat (f);
if err && f(1) != "/", 
  f = file_in_loadpath (f);
				# Could not find it anywhere. Open will
				# fail.
  if isempty (f)
    f = f0;
    error ("slurp_file : Can't find '%s' anywhere",f0);
  end
end

## I'll even get decent error messages!
[status, s] = system (sprintf ("cat '%s'",f), 1);