Re: Discussion on global variables in IDL

[Martin Schultz <martin.schultz(at)dkrz.de>]

"Pavel A. Romashkin" <pavel.romashkin@noaa.gov> writes:

> ...
> Common blocks are useful - there is little doubt about it. But I can see
> very, very few instances when they are the only way. And the entire idea
> of "global" variables seems to me to be resulting from the evolutionary
> approach to programming - start with command line data analyses, get
> tired of copy-paste. write code, expand it and still need to access the
> data the way you started it.

And this is exactly their weakness. I would guess that most IDL applications 
are born out of ad-hoc code once written to analyse a specific situation,
and then generalized. To get rid of common blocks in this provess is much
harder than to avoid them in the first place.

Cheers,

Martin

-- 
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[[ Dr. Martin Schultz   Max-Planck-Institut fuer Meteorologie    [[
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