Institut für Astronomie und AstrophysikAbteilung AstronomieSand 1, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany |
MRD_SKIP
Skip a number of bytes from the current location in a file or a pipe
First tries using POINT_LUN and if this doesn't work, perhaps because the unit is a pipe, MRD_SKIP will just read in the requisite number of bytes. GZIP files opened with /COMPRESS (in V5.3 or later) are also read as a series of bytes, since this is faster than using POINT_LUN when not at the beginning of a file.
MRD_SKIP, Unit, Nskip
Unit - File unit for the file or pipe in question, integer scalar Nskip - Number of bytes to be skipped, positive integer
This routine should be used in place of POINT_LUN wherever a pipe may be the input unit (see the procedure FXPOSIT for an example). Note that it assumes that it can only work with nskip >= 0 so it doesn't even try for negative values. For reading a pipe, MRD_SKIP currently uses a maximum buffer size of 8 MB. This chunk value can be increased for improved efficiency (or decreased if you really have little memory.)
Written, Thomas A. McGlynn July 1995 Don't even try to skip bytes on a pipe with POINT_LUN, since this might reset the current pointer W. Landsman April 1996 Increase buffer size, check fstat.compress W. Landsman Jan 2001 Only a warning if trying read past EOF W. Landsman Sep 2001 Use 64bit longword for skipping in very large files W. Landsman Sep 2003
[Home Page] [Software, Documentation] [IDL Documentation] [Quick Reference] [Feedback]