Re: Array has a corrupted descriptor

[thompson(at)orpheus.nascom.nasa.gov (William Thompson)]

Reimar Bauer <r.bauer@fz-juelich.de> writes:

>Hi,

>I got an error sometimes in one of my routines only on AIX.

>-- IDL> help,!version,/str
>** Structure !VERSION, 7 tags, length=44:
>   ARCH            STRING    'ibmr2'
>   OS              STRING    'AIX'
>   OS_FAMILY       STRING    'unix'
>   RELEASE         STRING    '5.4.1'
>   BUILD_DATE      STRING    'Jan 16 2001'
>   MEMORY_BITS     INT             32
>   FILE_OFFSET_BITS
>                   INT       =       32

>The same routine works on linux and windows.

>The error text is:
>% Array has a corrupted descriptor: VAR

>the calling sequence is something like this 

>var=function(x)

>First I like to know what's this error is meaning.

>It seems to me that's the RETURN statement won't work.

>The result value of my function is good.

>If it reachs the calling level of the function I got 
>this error. 


I suspect that the function is calling external code via something like
CALL_EXTERNAL or LINKIMAGE.  I've gotten error messages like that in the past
when mixing IDL with external code.

The descriptor is the thing which describes a variable in IDL.  It contains the
datatype, array dimensions, and the physical location of the data in memory.
When you pass around variables in IDL, you're really passing around the
descriptors.

William Thompson