Non-integer station names in Survex

Subpopulus Hibernia

Active member
Does anyone have the solution to the following Survex problem I have.

When I'm linking survey files together in survex I use a command like

          *equate  sectionone.1 sectiontwo.2

where 'sectionone' is the name of the file and '1' is the exported station.

However, when I have stations that adopts the form 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, this seems to become impossible. If, for example, '1.1' is the station exported from 'sectionone', the equate function looks like this;

          *equate  sectionone.1.1 sectiontwo.2.2

which returns the following error message:

          test.svx:3: Reference to station "test.sectionone.1.0" from non-existent survey "test.sectionone.1"

So it takes the survey name as 'sectionone.1' rather than 'sectionone'.

Does anyone know how to overcome this? Typically I don't use decimal points in my station names, but I'm dealing with old survey data that has spicy stations like 1.2.45, and I can't rename them all.

Simply changing the exported station to an integer doesn't work, as Survex seems to just find the next non-integer station name and give an error message like:

          Reference to station "test.sectionone.1.1" from non-existent survey "test.sectionone.1"

As far as I know, Therion doesn't have this problem, and it runs on Survex. What am I missing?
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
have you included test.section.1 in the higher file?

for example:
*equate PDA_Papoose.40 ExtraCaverns.STN40
*equate Forgott_passage.9 ExtraCaverns.60
*equate ExtraCaverns.37 free_willy.6
*equate free_willy.0 free_left_willy.2
*equate free_willy.2 free_right_willy.a
*equate shit_inlet_extra_caverns.4 ExtraCaverns.52
*include ExtraCaverns.svx
*include free_willy.svx
*include free_left_willy.svx
*include free_right_willy.svx
*include Forgott_passage.svx
*include shit_inlet_extra_caverns.svx
;This is telling survex to include the above named .svx files and then look within them for the particular survey point.

#Much like how you would use the
input blah.th
equate a@blah d@car
#in your therion file.

The above survex example is here:
http://cave-registry.org.uk/svn/Andara/Tresviso/Marniosa/Marniosa.svx
with the directory here:
http://cave-registry.org.uk/svn/Andara/Tresviso/Marniosa
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
actually this is a better example...

http://cave-registry.org.uk/svn/Andara/Tresviso/Marniosa/Silvestre.svx

I surveyed this on Pocket topo, so all the points are in the form 1.1
1.2
1.3
etc

so the way Phil and DC got them to work in survex is to put silvestre1 then list the number itself after that.

so when referring to the points you still equate silvestre1.1 blah1.5



these are referred to in my first higher "cave" level example. "marniosa.svx"



(but I fear excel may be your friend in this cave, could use "text to columns" on the survey points to separate out the [/size]
old survey data that has spicy stations like 1.2.45
which would then become columns of 1    2    45
then insert a line at each change in numbers the necessary
[/size]
*BEGIN Silvestre1
*export 0 5 9 4
*DATE 2018.09.10

*alias station - ..
0 - 1.52 229.54   0.58
???.
*END Silvestre1

 

Subpopulus Hibernia

Active member
I'm able to use the *equate function and have used it to build up large surveys with 50+ Survex files. That's not the issue.

The problem is I can't figure out how to get station names that have a decimal point in them to work with Survex. Standalone files where the stations are numbered 3.2, 3.3, etc. work fine, but as soon as you start to *equate them together I simply get error messages.

So for example, if the higher file reads;

*begin test
*equate testone.10 testtwo.20
*include data/testone
*include data/testtwo
*end test


and the lower ones are;

*begin testone
*export 10
10 11 100 100 -45
*end testone


and

*begin testtwo
*export 20
20 21 100 100 45
*end testtwo


it works fine. But if the survey stations have decimal points then;

*begin test
*equate testone.1.0 testtwo.2.0
*include data/testone
*include data/testtwo
*end test


and the lower ones are;

*begin testone
*export 1.0
1.0 1.1 100 100 -45
*end testone


and

*begin testtwo
*export 2.0
2.0 2.1 100 100 45
*end testtwo


Then I get error messages informing me that testone.1 can't be found. I can see how Survex is getting confused but I would have though there was a way around this as stations names with decimal points are commonly used.
 

Subpopulus Hibernia

Active member
alastairgott said:
actually this is a better example...

http://cave-registry.org.uk/svn/Andara/Tresviso/Marniosa/Silvestre.svx

I surveyed this on Pocket topo, so all the points are in the form 1.1
1.2
1.3
etc

so the way Phil and DC got them to work in survex is to put silvestre1 then list the number itself after that.

so when referring to the points you still equate silvestre1.1 blah1.5


these are referred to in my first higher "cave" level example. "marniosa.svx"

Hmm. That's one way of dealing with it, but it seems quite laborious. I can think of variations of that that might work for me, but they all still involve a fair bit of reconfiguring the file. I would have expected that a fairly smart program like Survex would have some way of figuring it out?


 

alastairgott

Well-known member
this looks like another way of dealing with spice from Aygill.

http://cave-registry.org.uk/svn/NorthernEngland/ThreeCountiesArea/survexdata/EaseGill/ag/
 

Subpopulus Hibernia

Active member
aardgoose said:
will the

set separator

command word to change '.' to something else? Not tried it.

Cheers! I started messing about with the *set command and discovered that Survex will accept dashes as separators in station names by default. So changing the decimal points to dashes meant that it would process the file.

There's probably another way I could do it via the *set separator command you suggested to make Survex accept @ or / as the level separator in the *equate commands. And that might save the chore of changing all the station names.

I'll have another go at it tomorrow.
 
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