Re: Am I stupid?

[Paul van Delst <paul.vandelst(at)noaa.gov>]

Jaco van Gorkom wrote:
> 
> Craig Markwardt wrote:
> > "Liam E. Gumley" <Liam.Gumley@ssec-nospam.wisc.edu> writes:
> > > Colin Rosenthal wrote:
> > > > ... to have a keyword AXISCOLOR in a routine that also accepts
> > > > the AX keyword. ...
> > > ...
> > > "Keywords can be abbreviated to their shortest unique length"
> > >
> > > In your case, the keyword AX precludes the use of another keyword which
> > > begins with the letters "AX". A good rule of thumb is to make the first
> > > 3 characters of each keyword unique.
> > ...
> > Not that this doesn't frustrate the heck out of me sometimes.  There
> > are many times where I want keywords like TIME, TIMEUNIT, TIMESTEP,
> > and so on.  My suggestion is that the above policy should hold,
> > *unless* there is an exact match to a specific keyword.
> 
> There is no reason why this behaviour could not be introduced in the next
> version of IDL, or is there?

It will make code harder to read and understand. Once you give your code to others, they
may use it in other code with abbreviated keywords and not enough comments as to what they
are doing. The current set up does not allow this.

Therefore it is A Good Thing. :o)

> So who is frustrated enough to put in a feature
> request with RSI (/VNI?) for this, for the benefit of us all?

I wonder if there is a way for me to write a little Perl script to automatically send in a
Feature Un-Request whenever this Feature Request is emailed to RSI......  :o)

Unambiguously Yours,

paulv

-- 
Paul van Delst           A little learning is a dangerous thing;
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