Miscellaneous Procedures
2000
pro/misc
February
The procedures in this directory are general utility procedures that do
not
involve astronomy.
They are included here either because they are
required
by an astronomy-related procedure, or because they are thought to be of
sufficient general interest.
The procedure ASTROLIB defines the non-standard system variables
!TEXTOUT,
!TEXTUNIT and !DEBUG which some Astronomy Library procedures require to
be
defined before they can compile.
Note that the function TRIM() is kept here for backwards compatibility
but is
not used by any other AstroLib procedure, and conflicts with a procedure
of the
same name in the IUE Library.
ASTROLIB - Add the non-standard system variables in use in the IDL
Astronomy User's Library
BOOST_ARRAY - Append one array onto another, adjusting dimensions if
necessary
BREAK_PATH() - break up a !PATH-like string into individual directories
BSORT() - Like the IDL SORT function but subscript order is maintained
when
value are equal -- like a bubble sort.
CIRRANGE - Force an angle to be in the range 0 to 2*!PI (or 0 to 360).
CONCAT_DIR - concatenate directory and file name for current OS
CONV_UNIX_VAX - Convert IEEE datatype to VMS datatypes
CONV_VAX_UNIX() - Convert Vax datatypes to Unix using proper byteswapping
DATATYPE() - Return the datatype of an IDL variable as a string
DELVARX - Delete an IDL variable; like DELVAR but works at any calling
level
DETABIFY() - Replace tabs in a character string by equivalent number of
spaces
EXPAND_TILDE() - Expand the tilde in Unix directory names
F_FORMAT() - Find the "best" F format to display an array of REAL*4
numbers.
FDECOMP - Decompose a file name (Disk + Directory + Name + Extension +
Version)
FINDPRO - Find all occurrences of a procedure in one's !PATH
FIND_WITH_DEF - Search for files with default path and extension
FORPRINT -Print a set of vectors by looping over each index value
FSTRING() - Wrapper to STRING function to get around 1024 element
formatted limit
GETFILES -Interactively specify a list of file numbers.
GETLOG() - Format the input name as a logical directory in the host OS
GETOPT() - Parse a user supplied string into numeric value(s).
GETPRO - Search !PATH directory for a procedure and copy into user's
directory
GETTOK() - Extract a string up to a specified character.
GETWRD() - Get specified item (word) from a string (in /jhuapl)
HOST_TO_IEEE - Convert IDL variable from host machine bit order to IEEE
HPRINT - Pretty terminal display of a FITS header (or other string
array)
IEEE_TO_HOST - Convert IDL variable from IEEE bit order to host machine
ISARRAY() - Determine if an IDL variable is an array (in /jhuapl)
IS_IEEE_BIG() - Determine if the host machine is IEEE big endian
LIST_WITH_PATH() - Search for files within specified directory path
MAKE_2D - Change from 1-D indexing to 2-D indexing
MATCH Find the subscripts where the values of two vectors match.
MRD_SKIP - Skip a number of bytes from current location in a file or Unix
pipe
MINMAX() - Return the min and max of an array in an 2 element vector
NULLTRIM() -Delete all characters after, and including, the the first
null
byte(0). Called by TAB_PUT.
NUMLINES() - Return the number of lines in a file
ONE_ARROW - Draw an arrow labeled with a single character
ONE_RAY - Draw a ray by specifying starting point, angle, and length
ORDINAL() - Return the English equivalent of ordinal numbers, i.e.
'1st','2nd'
OSFCNVRT() - Format the input as a logical name in the host operating
system
POLREC - Convert from polar to rectangular coordinates (in /jhuapl)
PRODUCT() - Return the product of all the elements of an array.
QGET_STRING() - Read a string (eg. password) from the keyboard without
echoing it
RDFLOAT - Quickly read an ASCII file with columns of data into IDL
vectors
READCOL - Read a file of free-format ASCII data into IDL vectors
READFMT - Quickly read a file of fixed-format ASCII data into IDL vectors
READ_KEY() - Like GET_KBRD but returns a code for escape sequences.
RECPOL - Convert from rectangular to polar coordinates (in /jhuapl)
REMCHAR - Remove all appearances of a character from a string.
REM_DUP() - Remove duplicate values from a vector.
REMOVE - Contract a vector or up to 8 vectors by removing specified
elements.
REPCHR() - Replace all occurrences of one character by another (in
/jhuapl)
REPSTR() - Replace all occurrences of one substring in a string by
another.
SCREEN_SELECT - Allow user to interactively select from a list of strings
Used by the database software
SELECT_O - VT100 terminal branch of SCREEN_SELECT
SELECT_W - IDL widget branch of SCREEN_SELECT.
SPEC_DIR() - Complete specification of a file name using default disk &
directory
STORE_ARRAY - Insert one array into another, adjusting dimensions if
necessary
STREBCASC() - Convert an EBCDIC string scalar or vector to its ASCII
equivalent
STRN() - Convert a number to a string and remove padded blanks.
STRNUMBER()- Determine whether a string is a valid numeric value.
TEXTOPEN - Open a file for text output as specified by !TEXTOUT
Controls the print output device for many procedures.
TEXTCLOSE - Close a file that had been opened by TEXTOPEN.
TRIM() - Convert numbers to strings, without trailing zeros.
TO_HEX()
- Translate a decimal integer to a hex string. Called by
AIPSNAME.
VALID_NUM() - Determine if a string is a valid number (cf. STRNUMBER)
VECT() - Display a set of numbers to a string with delimiters
WHERENAN() - Find points equal to IEEE NaN (not a number) values
ZPARCHECK - Check the type and size of a parameter