Re: Top 10 IDL Requests

[Jeff Guerber <jguerber(at)icesat2.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

On Fri, 21 Jul 2000, Jeff Guerber wrote:

>     Wow, it looks like we're _finally_ able to post again!  And it only
> took them four months!
> 
>     Anyway, after thinking about it for a while, here's _my_ IDL wishlist.  
> [11 items deleted]

   It seems Goddard's about to lose its newsfeed, _again_, but both
outgoing and incoming this time; so, I'd better get this in while I still
can.  I'm afraid I've thought of a couple more wishlist items to heap upon
that ever-growing pile:

   12) Something like "_extra=", but which does _not_ override keywords
explicitly specified on the call line; "_default=", perhaps.  I recently
wrote a program that instantiates an object (which I also wrote), then
adds various things to it (the object uses David Fanning's exceedingly
useful linkedlist__define.pro... Thanks David!), each of which has
properties (specified with keywords, of course).  The calling program has
a structure containing defaults for the properties, which I pass to the
object using "_extra="; however, on some of the calls, I would have liked
to have overridden some of these defaults.  But since _extra overrides
explicit keywords, I wound up making extra calls to the object's
SetProperty method.

   13) The ability to move up and down the call stack from the command
line.  When a program stops in a procedure, you can examine the variables
in that procedure; but, sometimes I'd like to examine some of the ones in
its caller, too.  I can do this in IDLDE (I think); but since I normally
use emacs+idlwave (on HP-UX), I'd much rather be able to do it from the
regular command line.  Somewhat like you can in, say, gdb or other
debuggers.

   OK, so it's only supposed to be a "Top 10" list, but hey, 10 EQ 13 for
sufficiently large values of "10"!  :-)

                                              Jeff Guerber
 
                                              Raytheon ITSS
                                              NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
                                              Oceans & Ice Branch (code 971)
 
Any opinions here are my own.  Well, in a few cases I borrowed them
from other people, but they're certainly not Raytheon's or NASA's!