[fitsbits] Start of the CONTINUE keyword Public Comment Period

[William Pence]

Peter Teuben wrote:
>   perhaps it would be useful to explicitly mention that the & character is
> not part of the resulting keyword value. 
> 
> And also make the example shorter so you can easily show the equivalent string
> in a single-keyword example:

Agreed. I'll make these changes in the next version of the documentation.

Thomas McGlynn wrote:
> It might be useful to explicitly address some corner cases, e.g.,
> long strings that end in &.
> 
>    SVALUE   = 'This is a long string &'
>    CONTINUE   'really long &'
>    COMMENT    'But is this part of it?'
>    CONTINUE   'Or is this?'
> 
> I guess that the intended value of SVALUE in this case is
>      'This is a long string really long &'

Correct.  If a string value ends with an `&' and is NOT followed
by a CONTINUE keyword, then the `&' character is interpreted literally 
as the last character of the string value).

> You might also wish to explicitly note what is supposed
> to be done with a CONTINUE statement that doesn't follow
> a string ending in &.  Presumably it is to be ignored.
> 
>     SVALUE  = 'This is a short string'
>     CONTINUE  'And this is not part of it'

Yes.  Software should treat orphaned CONTINUE keywords the same as a 
COMMENT keyword.  Software that doesn't support this convention at all 
should treat all the CONTINUE keywords this way.  I'll revise the 
documentation to explicitly cover these cases.

Bill Pence
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence                       pence at milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662       HEASARC        +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
Greenbelt MD 20771                      +1-301-286-1684 (fax)