evans@stsci.EDU (Ian Evans) (08/08/90)
IDL only considers the first 15 characters in a variable name when determining whether or not a variable name is unique; it ignores characters beyond the 15th. Many people who write large and complex applications in IDL find this an unnecessary and annoying restriction. Particularly when trying to use "meaningful" variable names, or variable names with module prefixes as part of the identifier, one often runs out of characters. I am trying to locate other IDL code developers on the net who find the 15 character limitation annoying, and if there are enough people I will send an electronic petition to Dave Stern at RSI to try and get the limit raised. If you find the limit annoying and are willing to participate in this petition, then please send me a mail message including your name and e-mail address to the address below. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS NEWSGROUP! I would initially propose that the character limit be raised to 31 characters. If you disagree, you can include in your mail message what you think the limit should be raised to. The reason I chose 31 characters is that I suspect it will probably be much easier to modify the IDL source to use another fixed limit rather than handle arbitrary length identifiers, and secondly I also suspect that for most uses 31 characters will be enough for most people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ian Evans Phone: (301) 338-4756 Space Telescope Science Institute Internet: evans@scivax.stsci.edu 3700 San Martin Drive Bitnet: evans@stsci Baltimore, MD 21218 SPAN: SCIVAX::EVANS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------