NI TestStand Idea Exchange

Let's say I'm building a fairly long compound expression that has some repeated parameters - I would like a way to specify (without creating additional locals) a variable/macro for use just within that expression.

For example, instead of:

Locals.CommandLine = "cmd /c C:\some path\that\is\reused"
Locals.CommandLine += " /path C:\some path\that\is\reused"

I could specify:

#pathmacro "C:\some path\that\is\reused"
Locals.CommandLine = "cmd /c " + pathmacro
Locals.CommandLine += " /path " + pathmacro

The idea being that with this I only need to update the macros in one place in a long expression.

This is a simple example, but hopefully you can see why this would be useful and why I wouldn't want to create lots of locals when the values are required only within the expression.

When setting arrays, even multi-dimensional arrays, it is possible to initialize them in single assignment expression. For example, "Locals.Array = {1, 2, 3}" will re-define Locals.Array as a 1D array with elements "1", "2", and "3". This is essentially the same as C-style initialization syntax, which also supports structs.

It would be helpful if containers could be assigned in a similar manner. For example, the illustrated container:

could be assigned completely using "Locals.Container = {True, 1, "foo"}".

Currently, that syntax generates a run-time error, "Expected Container, found Array of Containers".

The only scenario I could think of where assignment gets a little weird is with Object types, but in that case you'll have to be assigning Nothing, the return of a function call, or an existing object from another property - there's no way to define a literal value to assign there, but that's already the inherent nature of Object types.

My use case is often container initialization. There are several kludges around this - keeping an empty copy of the container and assigning it to the working copy to clear the working copy, individually listing out each parameter, and a few others. Another case is when it's useful to assign a constant to module parameter - it's debatable that may be bad form, but would still dramatically improves the ease of skimming parameters if it were implemented. It would be a slight bonus to Sequence adapter in particular, which cannot expand containers in the parameter list, as other adapter types can (go kudos Allow Sequence Adapter to expand containers in the module tab to fix that!).