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Re: Functions and arrays [message #7594 is a reply to message #7592]

Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00

Peter Mason
Messages: 145
Registered: June 1996

Senior Member

On 4 Dec 1996, Stein Vidar Hagfors Haugan wrote:
> People at RSI (and not just support people) do read this newsgroup (and
> act on it as well: XPAD/YPAD/SPACE=0 will once again rule, in IDL v 5.0!),
> so this place may very well be the best place for a campaign to remove
> this quite serious (and dangerous) "feature". I do think that we need to
> show some enthusiasm to make it happen, though (i.e., the more people
> agreeing about this being a rather nasty thing that they'd like to see
> removed, the better).

I'd also really like to see this ambiguity sorted out.

> Or at least get a compile time error about the possible mixup,
> something like "Error: test1 interpreted as a function in line 5,
> but as a variable in line 10".

I think that this would be a good idea. It wouldn't bust any code that
wasn't already hovering on the edges of "busthood", and it would catch many
of the ambiguities. When requested to compile a function, IDL could stop with
an error if a variable of the same name already existed. When requested to
create a new variable, IDL could stop with an error if a function of the same
name had already been compiled, or had been declared in a FORWARD_FUNCTION
statement.
This would still have some holes. Functions are often coded in their own
source files (one function per file) to facilitate automatic compilation.
One would have to force the compilation of such functions with RESOLVE (or
such), or flag them with FORWARD_FUNCTION, to be sure of things.

But I think that a proper cure would involve a basic syntax change, like
using [] instead of () on arrays. If RSI proposed this, I think I would
actually consider supporting it. (I'm sure I'm pretty much alone in this
opinion - just thought I'd mention it.)

Peter Mason

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[Message index]

		Re: Functions and arrays By: David R. Klassen on Sat, 07 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: Tim Patterson on Fri, 06 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: haimov on Fri, 06 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: steinhh on Fri, 06 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: greenwoodde on Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: William Clodius on Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: thompson on Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: Mirko Vukovic on Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: brian.jackel on Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: Anonymous on Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: llobet on Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: Peter Mason on Thu, 05 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: thompson on Wed, 04 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: steinhh on Wed, 04 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: gunter on Wed, 04 December 1996 00:00
		Re: Functions and arrays By: rigby on Wed, 04 December 1996 00:00

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