Re: Am I stupid?

[Reimar Bauer <r.bauer(at)fz-juelich.de>]

Paul van Delst wrote:
> 
> Bill wrote:
> >
> > A better way to describe what could, but is not, implemented for IDL's keywords is a multise
> > stage process
> >
> > 1. If a keyword on an invocation exactly matches a keyword in the functions's definition then it
> > is that keyword, else
> >
> > 2. if the  keyord on invocation is an abbreviation for exactly one keyword in the functions's
> > definitition then it is that keyword, else
> >
> > 3. It is an error that can be determined statically.
> 
> I understand your point (and Jaco's and James'.... and Craig's too I think) but, to me,
> the above rules are defined with only the programmer's (i.e. the person that wrote the
> code that has some potential for ambiguousness (?) in the keywords) viewpoint.
> 
> My main, err, discomfort with allowing "The keyword is too short to be unique, therefore
> it is unabbreviated" type of behaviour is that it does not take into account the person
> who is using this code cold and is not an IDL whiz. I think that with a little bit of
> forethought, these issues can be eliminated by the code writer to save the puir wee
> unsuspecting future IDL user from some code that was written with potential ambiguous
> keyword problems. To paraphrase Reverend Lovejoy's wife: "will somebody *please* think of
> the users!" :o)
> 
> Phew.
> 
> O.k., no more poking pointy sticks at windmills for me. :o)


So this means no keywords only _extra and own rules to interpret 
_extra as keywords.

Only a few new idl programmers will understand what's _extra is doing.

With one of the rsi internal routines we can create inside the routine
the variables
A and A1 and then they are not ambigous. 

But what do we win and what not if we do so?

The routine itselfs has no keywords and normally these keyword names
well 
defined and described and normally I see by this keywords what's the
routine is able to
do and what is missing.

A routine written in this way has different rules which are defined only
by the programmer.

Only a few special things will be better to use. 


pro stupid,_extra=e
  tn=tag_names(e)
  print,tn[0]+'='+string(e.(0))
  print,tn[1]+'='+string(e.(1))
end


Please could we make a list which rsi idl library routines has these
problems.




regards
Reimar

-- 
Reimar Bauer 

Institut fuer Stratosphaerische Chemie (ICG-1)
Forschungszentrum Juelich
email: R.Bauer@fz-juelich.de
http://www.fz-juelich.de/icg/icg1/
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