Mel Scripting Problem .. Basic..

[TekniX]

Hi,
I want to write a script that does basically the following ->
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1) Save names of all selected Materials into a array <- Completed...
2) While through all the Names and set a couple of attributes to layer override and specific values
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My Script until now :

string $materials[] = ` ls -selection -materials ` ;
int $nrofmats = size($materials);
int $i=0;

string $command;

while ( $i <= $nrofmats-1 )
{
//$commmand = $materials[$i]+".color";
//print($command);
//setAttr $materials[$i]+".color" -type "double3" 1 1 1 ;
$i++;
}

Looks quite bare .. it is in fact ;) . Ok my Problem is , how do i access the data ? In C++ ( god bless it ... ) i would only have to dereference from my pointer to the data in the structure like material->color . Ok, mel is not as "complicated" (haha good one .. ) so, instead i want to print each name of the array into the string command and add a .color to it ... Pretty basic. How do i do it ? if i do

$command = $material[$i]+."color";

and print out the command its = " " empty... Please help me with this one. Or tell me how i can navigate through all the selected material nodes and access theyr attributes.. The commands i need to perform are theese :
//Layer Overrides
editRenderLayerAdjustment $materials[$i].color ;
editRenderLayerAdjustment $materials[$i].diffuse ;
editRenderLayerAdjustment $materials[$i].eccentricity ;
editRenderLayerAdjustment $materials[$i].specularRollOff ;
editRenderLayerAdjustment $materials[$i].reflectivity ;
editRenderLayerAdjustment $materials[$i].specularColor ;
//Shader Adjustments.

setAttr $materials[$i].diffuse 1 ;
setAttr $materials[$i].eccentricity 0 ;
setAttr $materials[$i].specularRollOff 0 ;
setAttr $materials[$i].specularColor -type double3 1 1 1 ;
setAttr $materials[$i].reflectivity 0 ;
setAttr $materials[$i].color -type double3 1 1 1 ;
$i++ ;

The Whole Point with this is ( just in case youre wondering what the heck im doing ;) ) i want to automatise the creation of render layer settings, i have 24 shaders, and sincerely, until now Mel s got me crazy.. so i did it by hand, but this is the type of sily easy task wich programming can do better and faster than my hand and mouse ;) .
Thank you for the help !
Regards . TekniX