Can you abort from the "Evaluate Notebook" process ?
- To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
- Subject: Can you abort from the "Evaluate Notebook" process ?
- From: Simon Chandler <simonc at hpcpbla.bri.hp.com>
- Date: Tue, 28 Jun 1994 13:41:47 +0100
28/6/94 Dear MathGroupers, Are there any commands that will stop further evaluation of a Notebook, where the evaluation was kicked off by the "Evaluate Notebook" item under the "Action" menu heading ? We have a particular Notebook that is used by several Mathematica illiterate users. All they do is enter a single variable name, the name of the file they want processed, and then click on the "Evaluate Notebook" command. At the end of a (very long) calculation they are presented with a result. At several points in the calculation the file's contents may be such that further calculation is silly (or impossible) so after performing the test I would like to be able to abort the calculation and issue an appropriate warning. Now, if I were writing this Notebook from scratch I would correctly 'packagize' it, and write it in a way (probably using Throw and Catch) that would allow me to easily exit from routines. However, this particular Notebook was written by another author and is rather 'linear' in style; if everything goes well the Notebook commands are executed sequentially from beginning to end, et voila - the required result. My problem arises because I have been asked by the Notebook's current users to provide the abort mechanism I discuss above - so that time is not wasted continuing with a nonsensical calculation - but without significantly changing the Notebook's contents. In particular, they don't want me to change the Cell structure, so I can't just put any required tests and subsequent conditionally dependent code into a single If[] command (or can I, I may be wrong. Please tell me if it _is_ possible to put an If[] command across different cells). Please tell me if you know how I can easily abort (non-manually) from the "Evaluate Notebook" process without significantly re-writing the Notebook. I only wish I could ! Thanks, Dr Simon Chandler Hewlett-Packard Ltd (CPB) Filton Road Stoke Gifford Bristol BS12 6QZ Tel: 0272 228109 Fax: 0272 236091 email: simonc at bri.hp.com