Character strings in Ferret and PPL

[GRANEK Henry <hxg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Recently I started using ferret v4.4 on a SparcStation running Solaris 2.3.

I have been (unsucessfully) trying to assign character strings to some
variable, so that it can be used to, say, generate a label dependent on some
value, eg. assign Jan, Feb ... to mon_str depending on an integer assigned to
variable  mon.
I tried something like
PPL SET MONS $ELEMENT(mon,"/","Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr/May/Jun/Jul/Aug/Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec")

but that doesn't work well, possibly because the $ELEMENT function is not
properly implemented on the Sun. I tried few other things which included
if statements, but find I have
problems assigning character strings to variables in either ferret or ppl,
and furthermore, the ferret and ppl variables seem to have separate identities.

So the second question is: how do you communicate local information between
ferret and plotplus?

Thanks and cheerio for now
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Dr. Henry Granek                     |       e-mail: Henry.Granek@dar.csiro.au
Division of Atmospheric Research     |       Fax:    +61-3-9239 4444
CSIRO                                |       Tel:    +61-3-9239 4518
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AUSTRALIA, 3195                      |       WWW:    http://www.dar.csiro.au
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