vi.lib VIs not on default menus

[GregSands]

Seeing this mention of the Binary Search Pt-by-pt VI, which I would never have found, I was wondering if anyone has a list of all the vi.lib VIs that are not contained on any of the default menus? Even better, menus that expose them? Or add them to Quick Drop?

Certainly in the Utility directory there are an endless number - some I've used are:

Variant Data Type Library (menu here)

High Resolution Relative Seconds.vi

Range and Ratio.llb

libraryn.llb - the Librarian VIs which are mostly exposed as part of the OpenG File package (though not Create Directory Recursive or Delete Directory Recursive)

Any others which are particularly useful?

[Aristos Queue]

As a result of the great "Config VI Refactoring Debacle", I come down strongly on DISCOURAGING any use of VIs that are not in the palettes unless you copy them to a new location on disk and use them from there. I'm pushing to have the Variant Data Type library added to the palettes in LV 2012 so that it is no longer under this interdict.

[mje]

I find I use the error code lookup VI quite regularly. Can't remember the name, but the one that takes an Int32 as an input and transmogrifies it to a string with the error description. Has a hideous blue and pink icon, called something like Error Code DB lookup? If you bury down into the error handler VIs you'll find it.

Other than that, practically every project I've created in the last three years uses the variant library already mentioned, or rather my own library which extends it.

[jgcode]

As a result of the great "Config VI Refactoring Debacle", I come down strongly on DISCOURAGING any use of VIs that are not in the palettes unless you copy them to a new location on disk and use them from there. I'm pushing to have the Variant Data Type library added to the palettes in LV 2012 so that it is no longer under this interdict.

This package exposes the Variant Data Type Library palette if anyone is interested.

Cheers

-JG

[Darren]

As a result of the great "Config VI Refactoring Debacle", I come down strongly on DISCOURAGING any use of VIs that are not in the palettes unless you copy them to a new location on disk and use them from there. I'm pushing to have the Variant Data Type library added to the palettes in LV 2012 so that it is no longer under this interdict.

And as most people know (based on the content of many of my weekly nuggets, as well as my penultimate response on AQ's thread linked above), I often *encourage* people to use VIs that are not in the palettes/Quick Drop. I would venture to say that, since the config VI debacle (which occurred with the LabVIEW 2009 release), we haven't had any major upgrade problems associated with changed interfaces to VIs...our developers are more well-informed of the issues, and we have processes in place that analyze our shipping VIs for interface changes between versions.

Seeing this mention of the Binary Search Pt-by-pt VI, which I would never have found, I was wondering if anyone has a list of all the vi.lib VIs that are not contained on any of the default menus? Even better, menus that expose them? Or add them to Quick Drop?

Jarrod wrote a great Quick Drop Keyboard Shortcut that allows you to easily add a selection of code (which could just be a single VI) to the user palettes so it's accessible with Quick Drop. You can get it here.

[GregSands]

As a result of the great "Config VI Refactoring Debacle", I come down strongly on DISCOURAGING any use of VIs that are not in the palettes unless you copy them to a new location on disk and use them from there.

Then why leave so many useful VIs off the menus then?

The suggestion of copying them elsewhere makes sense, although then it becomes easy to miss if VIs are updated in a good way (as opposed to making things break).

I'm pushing to have the Variant Data Type library added to the palettes in LV 2012 so that it is no longer under this interdict.

I could probably name a dozen VIs/libraries from the Utility directory that seem to me to be similarly core functions (for example, the Range and Ratio VIs I mentioned above) - I guess someone found it easier at the time to just put them unnoticed into the Utility directory, and they've never migrated to a more useful place.

This package exposes the Variant Data Type Library palette if anyone is interested.

Yep, I did give you credit for that first up. (Thanks by the way!)

[Aristos Queue]

I guess someone found it easier at the time to just put them unnoticed into the Utility directory, and they've never migrated to a more useful place.

More often, those were put in to support some VI in the palettes or were put in to support LV functionality itself and they aren't intended to ever go into the palettes because they've not been tested for general use and, as noted in the long post, might be significantly refactored if we have other needs. There are very few that were put in by folks like Darren or myself as "backdoor LV functionality." Darren continues to add these. I've essentially stopped unless they're going in the palettes and put the VIs up someplace in the forums.