dv - Declare Variables					Bob Wilson


EXAMPLES:
dv "flux(10) peak" s:"name"		Declare an array of 10 reals called
					flux, a single real peak and a string
					called name.

dv n:".flux(10) .peak" s:".name"	Same as above if you prefer this style.

dv n:".flux(10) .peak" s:".name" l:	Same as above, but this may only be
					done from within a macro and the
					variables will only be visible in that
					macro (and will disappear when the macro
					completes).

c .peak=.stak(.expch)			Set peak to the value at the expected
					channel in stack 1.

p .flux(5)=5.5				Set the 5th element of flux

DESCRIPTION:

'dv' allows users to declare new variables in Comb.  The values of 
declared variables are accessed by the usual "." method.  By default the
variables will be global in scope and may be used in the same way that
header variables are.  With the 'l:' flag, the declared variables
become local to the macro in which they are defined.  They would hide
similarly named global or scan variables.  You may define both string and
numeric variables in the same command.  Within the name strings, names
may be separated by spaces and/or commas and may optionally be preceded
by a period.

Numeric variables are initialized to zero and strings to an empty string
when declared.  Re-declaration of the same name will re-initialize the
variables and will allow array sizes to change.  Switching a variable
from string to numeric or vice versa will trigger a warning, but can be done.
Names can be up to 63 chars and strings can be any length, but the parser
starts complaining at a length of 8192.

Scan and stack header variables are reserve words, as are the scan and
stack data variables ndat() and stak(), and the special variable DR (DRAGON).
These predefined values are also reserve words:

  Name     Value                     Type       Description
  ----  -------------------------   ------      ---------------
  PI    3.14159265358979323846      double      you know, pi.
  AMU   1.660540E-24                float       atomic mass unit
  C     2.99792458E10               double      speed o' light in cm/s
  E     2.7182818284590452354       double      natural log base
  G     6.67259E-8                  float       gravitational constant, cm^3/gm/s^2
  K     1.380658E-16                float       Boltzmann constant, erg/K 
  PC    3.085678021E18              double      1 parsec in cm
  MSUN  1.989E33                    float       1 solar mass in grams

The value of fundamental physical constants comes from the NIST web site:

	http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/index.html

You can override any value with "c" or "p", of course.

Finally, you can't use "#" or "$" in a variable name because it confuses
the parser.

This document was last updated on Tue Oct 17 16:24:05 EDT 2000 by Marc W. Pound.