| Feature, or bug? [message #80243] |
Sat, 19 May 2012 12:20  |
whdaffer
Messages: 10
Registered: January 2000
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Junior Member |
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Found an interesting, ummm, feature.
I frequently use the following construct.
if n_elements(a) * n_elements(b) * ... * n_elements(z) eq 0 then
begin
Message,'....'
endif
with a catch block to do my preliminary argument processing.
It turns out, there are circumstances where this product can equal 0,
even when all the n_element()'s return non-zero numbers
To see this, consider...
IDL> print, long(27072)^6
0
Any more than 5 arrays with 27072 elements followed by whatever else
and that construct will always evaluate to 0. I had 6, plus a few that
had fewer elements.
I also tried a case where I put the arrays with fewer alements up
front. It failed too.
IDL> a=(b=(c=(d=(e=(f=fltarr(27072))))))
IDL> print,(n_elements(fltarr(10)) *n_elements(1) *n_elements(a))
*n_elements(b) * n_elements(c) *n_elements(d) *
n_elements(e)*n_elements(f) & print,check_math()
0
0
and check_math says all is okay (If I understand check_math correctly)
Doesn't seem to be a 32-bit/64-bit issue, I replicated it on a 64-bit
machine.
IDL> help,!version
** Structure !VERSION, 8 tags, length=76, data length=76:
ARCH STRING 'x86'
OS STRING 'linux'
OS_FAMILY STRING 'unix'
OS_NAME STRING 'linux'
RELEASE STRING '8.1'
BUILD_DATE STRING 'Mar 9 2011'
MEMORY_BITS INT 32
FILE_OFFSET_BITS
INT 64
IDL>
Since n_elements returns a long (not even a ulong, which, when you
think about it for a second, it really should, but that wouldn't have
helped me, in my particular case because that had the same behavior) I
guess the upshot is: don't use that construct!
Safer would be
if (n_elements(a) eq 0)*... then begin ...
I just never imagined that I could multiply nonzero integers together
and get a zero!
whd
whd
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