Re: Am I stupid?

[James Kuyper <kuyper(at)wizard.net>]

Paul van Delst wrote:
...
> > On second reading, the documentation ("IDL> ? abbreviating keywords") exactly
> > describes Craig's suggestion. The full keyword TIME cannot be abbreviated to a
> > shorter unique length, whereas TIMESTEP can be abbreviated to the shortest
> > unique lenght TIMES. Nowhere in the documentation can I find the behaviour that
> > the keyword TIME may not be used, simply because... because... well, for no reason
> > at all actually.
> 
> Umm, I haven't had my requisite 4 cups of coffee yet this morning so I may be fading in
> and out here, but if you specify a keyword TIME=something, how is the interpreter supposed
> to know if you are specifying TIME, TIMEUNIT abrreviated to "TIME", or TIMESTEP
> abbreviated to "TIME"? My initial fix would be to rename TIME to TIMEVALUE and stick an
> easy to see comment somewhere in the header warning users about abbreviating these
> keywords too much.

It would know that TIME cannot be an abbreviated keyword, because it's
too short to be unique. Therefore, it must be the full keyword.