[MINC-users] minc2 API error?

[EJ Nikelski]

Hi all,

    I've been writing some minc2 code, and have run into a problem
when retrieving attributes from a minc2 volume.  For example, say that
I wanted to get information on attribute "xspace:varid" (just as an
example).  If I were to start by retrieving the length of the
attribute by calling miget_attr_length, I would get a no-find returned
since miget_attr_length starts all attribute searches relative to
/minc-2.0/info.  Any path passed to miget_attr_length is simply
appended to /minc-2.0/info.  Therefore, call like this :

result = miget_attr_length(minc_volume, "/minc-2.0/dimensions/xspace",
"varid", &attr_length);

 ... would result in /minc-2.0/info/minc-2.0/dimensions/xspace being
searched for attribute "varid" (and subsequently not found).  The code
that causes this behaviour can be found in a number of miget_attr_xxx
functions, and therefore most other attribute related functions
similarly are unable to find requested attributes.  Now I know that
the API has specialty functions to retrieve all sorts of attributes,
however, I had assumed that one should be able to use the
miget_attr_xxx functions to retrieve any or all of the attributes --
and not just those in /minc-2.0/info/.  Is this assumption incorrect?

   By the way, I modified some of the miget_attr_xxx functions on my
system to respect an absolute path when passed (and not prepend
/minc-2.0/info/), which worked ... but broke other things (including
the minc2 "make check", amongst other things) ... so beware, as some
code assumes the current behaviour.

   Any comments/suggestions on this stuff would be welcome.


-Jim