| Re: Compiling IDL ... ever likey ? [message #5680 is a reply to message #5518] |
Thu, 25 January 1996 00:00   |
Ken Knighton
Messages: 44
Registered: May 1995
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Member |
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thompson@orpheus.nascom.nasa.gov (William Thompson) wrote:
> steinhh@amon.uio.no (Stein Vidar Hagfors Haugan) writes:
>
>
>> The key to improving performance is declaring the type and
>> dimensionality of the data that are to be manipulated. Very often,
>> IDL subroutines are made to deal with very specific data,
>> ...
>> If some of the input data do not match the declaration, a
>> runtime error occurs.
>
> Yeah, but then it wouldn't be IDL. You might as well write it in FORTRAN at
> that point, IMHO.
I disagree. IDL has tons of functionality built into it that are not present in languages like Fortran or C. IDL is like having Fo=
rtran, a graphics package, a widget toolkit, a numerics package, ... all rolled into one integrated product.
I develop GUI applications in IDL that generally run into thousands of lines of code. It would save me many, many hours of testing =
time if simple type mismatches could be detected at compile time. If there were an option for strong typing, an IDL lint program th=
at would find problems like this, or some other method for preventing simple mistakes that are caught at compile time by most langua=
ge systems, it would be fantastic. Actually, all that would have to happen is for a warning (as opposed to an error) to be generate=
d. I would then have a list of potential program killers that I could investigate.
Ken Knighton knighton@gav.gat.com knighton@cts.com
General Atomics
San Diego CA
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