Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
Unsupported keyword on older IDL version
This kind of problem must have come up in this group before, but here it is anyways. If I call the IDL systime function with the utc keyword: print, systime(/utc) on IDL versions older than 5.4 I get the expected 'keyword not supported' error message, since, well, it's not supported, right? The error message pops up when the function containing the systime call is compiled, so testing e.g. !version.release before executing the systime call doesn't work. The only solution I have come up with so far is to put the systime call inside a call_function call: print, call_function( 'systime', /utc) This will compile (I will still need to test for !version.release before actually executing the statement of course). This to me looks like a somewhat illegitimate use of call_function. Not that I mind bending the rules a bit, but are there any other (better) techniques of dealing with keywords that don't work in all IDL versions. Paul