Any way to output to multiple txt files with unique filenames using ACL?

[tmanagement]

Here's the line of code that creates a txt file on my C: drive. $var1 is just text.

eval $var1 output=C:\reports\report_1.txt;

I have multiple documents open and want to create a report of each document, but when I run the script, the output text file gets overwritten for every document I want a report of. I would like it so that each time I run the script on a different document, I get a new text file (i.e., report_1.txt, report_2.txt, report_3.txt).

I've tried using a variable in the output filename like below, but unless I source my acl file every time before running my script, it won't create multiple unique files. The eval command doesn't recognize the $n variable and just creates the filename without the variable.

eval $var1 output=C:\reports\report_$n.txt;

I've also tried putting the path of the filename into a variable, but that doesn't work either.

$path_var = C:\reports\report_$n.txt;

eval $var1 output=$path_var;

Anybody have an idea of how to solve this without hiring someone to manually rename each text file before running the report script?

Thank you in advance.

[ClayHelberg · Accepted solution]

You can use the execute function to get around ACL's habit of preassigning variable values used in command syntax. So, instead of

eval $var1 output=C:\reports\report_$n.txt;

you can use this

local cmd = "eval \"" . $var1 . "\" output=C:\reports\report_" . $n . ".txt;";

execute(cmd);

That should make sure the output location doesn't get interpreted until you actually run the execute command. Also, if you want to append output instead of overwriting a file, add a ">" after the equal sign in the output parameter.

--Clay

[tmanagement]

Thank you for your input! I had to mind my quotes, but it worked.