Re: How do I prevent underflow errors?

[Craig Markwardt <craigmnet(at)astrog.physics.wisc.edu>]

Phillip & Suzanne David <pdavid@earthling.net> writes:
> 
> I have a large array of data that I'd like to plot with the contour routine. 
> However, the dynamic range of the data is very large, with values as large as
> 1e36 and as small as 1e-40.  I noticed that contour accepts float data, not
> double data.  This data is outside the range of float data, so it needs to be
> scaled for the contour routine.  I don't really care to differentiate the
> 1e-40 from 0, but would like to be able to handle values up to the 1e36.  I
> was going to scale the data by the largest value (i.e.,
> PlotData=Float(Data/Max(Abs(Data)))).  This puts the data in the range of -1.0
> to 1.0.  This should be fine for Contour, but I get an underflow error when
> converting from double data to float data.  I understand that the data will
> come out with a 0 instead of 1e-76, and don't really care.  How do I get IDL
> to ignore the underflow and just convert the value?
> 
> Phillip
> 

Greetings,

Try the following with check_math(), which is documented in IDL.

 dummy = check_math(1, 1)
 .... commands with math errors are placed here ...
 dummy = check_math(0, 0)

Most of your messages will go away (except for maybe the last one).

Craig

-- 
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Craig B. Markwardt, Ph.D.         EMAIL: craigmnet@astrog.physics.wisc.edu
Astrophysics, IDL, Finance, Derivatives | Remove "net" for better response
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