Re: get variables name

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

J.D. Smith (jdsmith@astro.cornell.edu) writes:

> By the way, I once (two years ago!) made the comment in this context:
> 
> "This presumably is the very reason Insight chooses to do real
> importing/exporting from the $MAIN$ level: it is attempting to be a general
> purpose analysis tool that is not tied to any one specific format of the data it
> deals with.  As David, I also don't know the details of how Insight was written,
> but it is apparently written in IDL (and is restored from a save file).  I am
> uncertain how they could achieve this flexibility without special built-in
> functions which they're not telling us about."
> 
> I took a look inside that .sav file, and what do I find???  "ROUTINE_NAMES", of
> course.  Sometimes things just come together.

Oh, my Goodness! Was that Mark Goosman, the IDL Product
Manager, screaming!?

Can you imagine what this means? It might now be possible
to write an Insight-like tool that actually worked the way
people expect it to. *And* it might even look good. :-)

Cheers,

David

P.S. Let's just say I'm in the market for knowledgeable
IDL programmers who enjoy a challenge (as opposed to,
say, money) and are anxious to live in God's Country.
Object graphics experience is NOT required. :-)

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
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