Re: Built-in date / time routines

["Mark Hadfield" <m.hadfield(at)niwa.cri.nz>]

"Andy Loughe" <loughe@fsl.noaa.gov> wrote in message
38FC79DC.41131032@fsl.noaa.gov">news:38FC79DC.41131032@fsl.noaa.gov...
>
> I have inherited code which utilizes these built-in IDL routines:
>     var_to_dt
>     dt_subtract
>     dt_to_var
>     dt_add
>
> Would someone please tell me what happened to these?

Don't start me on this again!

All the "DT" routines (which, incidentally, were introduced for
compatibility with PV-Wave) were deemed to be non-Y2K compliant (remember
Y2K?) because one of them (str_to_dt) made a simple-minded assumption about
2-digit years. In order to claim complete Y2K compliance for the product,
RSI yanked the whole lot in version 5.2.1.

I corresponded about this with technical people at RSI--the answer was
"Sorry, but it's a done deal"

The routines were all implemented in code so if you can find a copy of them
they should still work fine. Of course, I wouldn't dream of suggesting that
you do anything to violate RSI's copyright.

Frankly, the "DT" routines weren't all that great and it shouldn't be too
hard to replace them with something else. Check out
http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/s1r/idl/s1rlib/time/time.html

Oh, and complain to RSI!

---
Mark Hadfield
m.hadfield@niwa.cri.nz  http://katipo.niwa.cri.nz/~hadfield/
National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research
PO Box 14-901, Wellington, New Zealand