Programatically replace renamed sub-vis

[Phillip Brooks]

I have a <user.lib> LLB that's about ten years old. It's been updated and recompiled without problems for all these years.

During analysis for an upgrade (from LV 7.0/TS 3.0 to LV 8.6/TS 4.1.1), I discovered that several of the VIs contained in this LLB use non-standard names (contain /\<>? characters). TestStand 4.1 would go into an endless loop and hang when trying to load a step pointing to a VI in an LLB with a non-standard OS name. This was reported to NI, and is fixed in TestStand 4.1.1.

I'm concerned about leaving these oddly named files 'as is'. I've read a few problems/rants on the NI forums with respect to NI's use of these non-standard naming conventions in LLBs, and have a fear (probably unnecessary) that support for the LLB may be dropped in a future version.

So....

I can rename the VIs. All calling VIs will break, and all TestStand sequences will error when run.

My sequence files are stored as INI text files, so I can perform a simple 'search and replace' to fix the calls.

How can I programmatically replace calls to these sub-vis from within a vi? I've been poking around in the 'optional' App methods and properties, but haven't found much. The only promising thing was Linker:Read Info and Linker:Write Info.

I renamed one of the offending VIs. I used Linker:Read Info and was able to evaluate a VI that calls the renamed VI. It appears that the Path and delimited name are the same for a VI that cannot be found.

I know what the old name and new name will be, and they will have the same path. I plan to leave the renamed files inside an LLB for now, and if the LLB construct goes away or I want to start using source control, I will use the LLB Manager to convert the LLB to a folder and be done.

There are references to the Linker: methods in the wiki entry for Pseudopath, but I can't figure out how the methods work

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

What would be the most simple:

Open up all the VIs you are ever interested in and do a 'Save machine' on the offending VIs. That should do.

Or open up all VIs, do a find (ctrl-f) and do a replace (new feature in LabVIEW 8.5/8.6)

What you could do is place the 'new name' inside the VI with the 'old name', and let the 'old name' VI write to a log-file if it is called.

After some time you know exactly which VIs are calling the 'old name'. Keeping this routine in place can be very usefull.

Ton