Re: When you can't concatenate structures like you expect....

[Paul van Delst <paul.vandelst(at)ssec.wisc.edu>]

Kenneth P. Bowman wrote:

> In article <3745B3BB.815FDE87@ssec.wisc.edu>, Paul van Delst
> <paul.vandelst@ssec.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
> As Pavel pointed out in another post, anonymous structures have a "hidden"
> name that must match in order to be able to concatenate.  The trick is to
> copy your original structure and update the fields, rather than creating a
> new structure.

Yep I know - I explained this and provided an example in my original post.

I guess what I really trying to say in my long-winded, circuitous way is that
I do not understand why IDL treats structures differently from any other data
type. I understand why one would have a restriction on changing the
definition of the various "tags" within a structure but other than that, why
should structures or arrays of structures be any different from other
variable types or arrays? From my point of view, it appears to be an
implementation issue within IDL - why should I care what the "hidden"
structure name is? If I cared about structure names I'd used a named
structure, right?

As Liam Gumley sagely pointed out to me this morning, I am really asking the
wrong question. Instead of asking "why doesn't this work like I expect it
should?" the question should be "what do I need to do to get the job done?"

cheers,

paulv

--
Paul van Delst
Space Science and Engineering Center | Ph/Fax: (608) 265-5357, 262-5974
University of Wisconsin-Madison      | Email: paul.vandelst@ssec.wisc.edu
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