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Abteilung Astronomie

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DBOPEN Source code in dbopen.pro

DBOPEN

Name
       DBOPEN
Purpose
       Routine to open an IDL database
Calling Sequence
       dbopen, name, update
Input Parameters
       name - (Optional) name or names of the data base files to open.
               It has one of the following forms:
               'name'          -open single data base file
               'name1,name2,...,nameN' - open N files which are
                               connected via pointers.
               'name,*'        -Open the data base with all data
                               bases connected via pointers
               ''              -Interactively allow selection of
                               the data base files.
               If not supplied then '' is assumed.
               name may optionally be a string array with one name
               per element.
       update - (Optional) Integer flag specifing openning for update.
               0       - Open for read only
               1       - Open for update
               2       - Open index file for update only
               !PRIV must be 2 or greater to open a file for update.
               If a file is opened for update only a single data base
               can be specified.
Output Parameters
       none
Keyword Parameters
       UNAVAIL - If present, a "database doesn't exit" flag is returned
                 through it.  0 = the database exists and was opened (if
                 no other errors arose).  1 = the database doesn't exist.
                 Also if present, the error message for non-existent databases
                 is suppressed.  The action, however, remains the same.  If
                 specifiying this, be sure that the variable passed exists
                 before the call to DBOPEN.
Side Effects
       The .DBF and .dbx files are opened using unit numbers obtained by
       GET_LUN.  Descriptions of the files are placed in the common block
       DB_COM.
Revision History
       Version 2, D. Lindler, Nov. 1987
       For IDL Version 2  W. Landsman May 1990 -- Will require further
           modfication once SCREEN_SELECT is working
       Modified to work under Unix, D. Neill, ACC, Feb 1991.
       UNAVAIL keyword added.  M. Greason, Hughes STX, Feb 1993.
       William Thompson, GSFC/CDS (ARC), 1 June 1994
               Added support for external (IEEE) representation.
       William Thompson, GSFC, 3 November 1994
                       Modified to allow ZDBASE to be a path string.
       8/29/95 JKF/ACC - forces lowercase for input database names.
       W. Landsman, Use CATCH to catch errors    July, 1997
       Converted to IDL V5.0   W. Landsman   September 1997

Last modified by pro2html on 2001 April 26 at 03:11 UTC

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Jörn Wilms (wilms@astro.uni-tuebingen.de)
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