Accessing section type (or segment type) information

[sgratiy]

When I instantiating a morphology in NEURON, is there a way of getting section types (or segment types) in the same format as in the swc file? Basically, I would like to be able to have one of the following integer values for a give section/segment:

type of neuronal compartment:
0 - undefined
1 - soma
2 - axon
3 - basal dendrite
4 - apical dendrite


Currently, to get the section type I use .hname() function, but then have to parse the string to get the relevant information. It works but seems like a backdoor approach to me. My goal is to save segment coordinates but also the segment type to disk for a later analysis.


Thanks