Testing for variables

[miloush]

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to check if a variable exists in a given file, and unfortunately the IMatFile indexer throws an exception when a variable does not exist. It would be useful to have a more tolerant way to access variables, such as one of the following:

• have IMatFile[string] return null if variable does not exist
• add IMatFile.TryGetVariable(string, out IVariable) method
• expose the underlying dictionary as IReadOnlyDictionary<string, IVariable>

[mahalex]

Thanks for creating the issue! The current way to check if a variable exists is go through the IMatFile.Variables array and test the Name property of the elements, which is quite ugly. I will go with the second proposed solution. Another approach would be to inherit IMatFile from IReadOnlyDictionary<string, IVariable> or IDictionary<string, IVariable>, but there are some problems associated with that: I feel like it should be a read-only dictionary, but there is already a setter on the indexer for some reason. I guess we can do it when (if) we think about the next major version with breaking changes to the API.

[mahalex]

Version 1.4.0-beta1 published on nuget.org contains this change. Feel free to test it.

[miloush]

Great, working for me!

[cbergemann]

It would be very usefull to have the same interface for IStructureArray - currently you need to iterate over the FieldNames property. Exposing the TryGet method of the underlying Dictionary would help.