Re: Top 10 IDL Requests

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

Craig Markwardt (craigmnet@cow.physics.wisc.edu) writes:

> davidf@dfanning.com (David Fanning) writes:
> > Vinay L. Kashyap (kashyap@head-cfa.harvard.edu) writes:
> > > 2. _EXTRA
> > > 
> > > Please consider having all built-in commands accept _EXTRA as a keyword.
> > 
> > Uh, this is the way it works. :-)
> 
> Uh, not quite.  There are some built in commands that don't accept any
> keywords at all.  The _EXTRA keyword doesn't work for them, *even* if
> the value passed is empty!
> 
> Why is this important?  Makes it a pain to write a wrapper procedure
> or function.

Alright, I must be obtuse today, but I can't figure out why
it would be hard to write wrapper routines for commands that
don't take keywords. Surely in writing the wrapper you give
at least *some* thought to what keywords you might expect
to be passed. Adding an _Extra to such a command seems
excessively anal at the very least, and certainly unnecessary. :-)

And what commands did you have in mind? I've never encountered
a built-in command that didn't accept this keyword mechanism.

Cheers,

David

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
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