Re: Am I stupid?

[Jaco van Gorkom <j.c.van.gorkom(at)fz-juelich.de>]

Craig Markwardt wrote:
> "Liam E. Gumley" <Liam.Gumley@ssec-nospam.wisc.edu> writes:
> > Colin Rosenthal wrote:
> > > ... to have a keyword AXISCOLOR in a routine that also accepts
> > > the AX keyword. ...
> > ...
> > "Keywords can be abbreviated to their shortest unique length"
> >
> > In your case, the keyword AX precludes the use of another keyword which
> > begins with the letters "AX". A good rule of thumb is to make the first
> > 3 characters of each keyword unique.
> ...
> Not that this doesn't frustrate the heck out of me sometimes.  There
> are many times where I want keywords like TIME, TIMEUNIT, TIMESTEP,
> and so on.  My suggestion is that the above policy should hold,
> *unless* there is an exact match to a specific keyword.

There is no reason why this behaviour could not be introduced in the next
version of IDL, or is there? So who is frustrated enough to put in a feature
request with RSI (/VNI?) for this, for the benefit of us all?

  Jaco

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Jaco van Gorkom                               gorkom@rijnh.nl
FOM-Instituut voor Plasmafysica "Rijnhuizen", The Netherlands