MAPFILE CLASS SYMBOL "[field].gif", symbol string preprocessor wanted

[sidmerlin]

will be very helpful feature, to use preprocessor to dbase-field substitution of MAPFILE SYMBOL 'string'

to use

   CLASS
        EXPRESSION ('[label]' != '')
        SYMBOL 'signs/[label].gif'
    END

instead of

   CLASS
        EXPRESSION ('[label]' = '1.10')
        SYMBOL 'signs/1.10.gif'
    END
    CLASS
        EXPRESSION ('[label]' = '1.11')
        SYMBOL 'signs/1.11.gif'
    END
.........

now we have error like:

[Sun May  3 18:04:11 2009].379 msLoadMap(): General error message. Undefined symbol "[label].gif" in class 1, style 0 of layer pics.

thank you for you time

[sdlime]

You can do this now but have to define the whole symbol text in a field, e.g.:

CLASS
  EXPRESSION ('[label]' != '')
  STYLE
    SYMBOL [symbol]
  END

With many sources you can build the symbol in the database call.

Not sure how easy/hard it would be to support a more general substitution syntax.

Steve

[sidmerlin]

Thanks for the help, it work!

With database help it is possible to compound the necessary value of image of symbol.

Certainly, sometime in the future, if someone realised full-function substitution of variables in all places where there are "strings" in MAPFILE, It would be very useful.