still cant figure out how to check for a string in a string in mel, but if mel is required you could always do this. string $layers[] = `ls -type "displayLayer"`;for ($i in $layers){ if (python("'LPL'" + "in" + "'" + $i +"'")) { setAttr($i + ".visibility", 1); }} though as you seen it is most easily done via python edit:…
ya blender uses python, which is a very clean and very good scripting language, that will also be useful to you if you move on to modo or maya since both of these also use python for scripting. also really $150 is a big deal for you, when investing in tools to do your work?
I'm pretty pumped about further python integration. We do tons of PyQt stand alone and it's always a pain to have to go back to doing UI in mel. They've also announced pyMel in 2011, which is huge! If you're not on the python train, time to get on board. Choo Choo!
Comtypes is a good alternative I find to the win32 one which can be buggy, I have had great success controling Photoshop with maya's python interpreter this way. Actually if you look in my SIG at the psLink video that was all done with the openmaya api and comtypes with maya's built in python.