Re: .skip

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

Mark Fardal (fardal@weka.astro.umass.edu) writes:

> The .SKIP command doesn't behave quite the way I would prefer.
> It doesn't behave as advertised either, although for a different reason.
> 
> What it is supposed to do is to skip one statement, or N statements if
> you give it an argument N, and then execute 1 statement.  I would
> prefer that it not execute that one statement.  It seems silly--after
> all, you are usually just going to type .continue--and who's to say
> that you won't decide to skip the next statement too.  Besides, it's
> not called .skip-and-execute-one.  The usual argument about preserving
> backwards code compatability don't apply here, since .SKIP can't be
> invoked from a program.
> 
> But anyway, what it actually does when you type IDL> .SKIP [N] 
> is to skip N statements, and then execute N statements.   Oops.
> This is with IDL 5.2.1L on Debian linux.
> 
> Before I submit a bug report, I thought I would ask whether people
> would like the feature change suggested above as well as the bug fix.
> Or are people emotionally attached to the current behavior?

It looks like it behaves this way in IDL 5.4 on Windows, too.
The good news is I'm not emotionally attached to this behavior,
since I have never used it. :-)

Submit away! 

Cheers,

David 

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
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