IDL problem under Mandrake Linux

["David G. Grier" <d-grier(at)uchicago.edu>]

Hi All,

    I've just upgraded my Mandrake Linux distribution to version 7.2 and
IDL has stopped
working in a strange and interesting way:

IDL> help, 2.D
<Expression>      DOUBLE     =   2.0000000
IDL> help, 2
<Expression>       INT               =  0
IDL> help, 2L
<Expression>       LONG           =       0
IDL> x = findgen(100)
% Array dimensions must be greater than 0.
% Execution halted at:  $MAIN$

IDL seems to be having  internal trouble with integer data types,
setting them all to 0.
This is the case with both IDL 5.3 and 5.4.  IDL worked fine under
Mandrake 7.1, suggesting
that this is a library version incompatibility.   Has anyone else seen
such behavior, and
is there a workaround (short of downgrading to 7.1 -- very undesirable)?

    Thanks in advance,

        David

P.S. Mandrake is supposed to be RedHat compatible  -- silence on the
newsgroup from RedHat 7
users suggests otherwise.

--
=========================================================================
David G. Grier               Dept. of Physics, James Franck Institute and
(773) 702-9176 (voice)                 Institute for Biophysical Dynamics
(773) 702-5863 (FAX)                            The University of Chicago
d-grier@uchicago.edu                                    5640 S. Ellis Ave
http://griergroup.uchicago.edu/~grier/                  Chicago, IL 60637
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