Re: array dimensions

["Richard G. French" <rfrench(at)wellesley.edu>]

Craig Markwardt wrote:

> If you are interested in important keywords, I've found
> SMOOTH(/EDGE_TRUNCATE) indispensable, as well as CONVOL(/CENTER).  I
> don't do *that* much time series analysis but it seems I always need
> these keywords when I do.
>

Now that you mention SMOOTH, one of my pet peeves is that 
y=SMOOTH(array,n) gives an error message when n=1. There are lots of 
instances where the degree of smoothing is calculated on the fly,
and one common instance is that you want no smoothing at all - i.e.
just give me the original array, unsmoothed. I've ended up writing
my own routine MYSMOOTH which is identical to smooth except that
it does not barf when n=1. Perhaps this has been changed recently,
but I don't think so. Does anyone have a good explanation for why
n=1 does not have the expected behavior of returning the array
unsmoothed? Or is there a keyword I have not been noticing that
can handle this case?

Dick French