char vs string variables

Jason Quinn wrote on Oct 13, 2008

I only just now noticed that you can use char variables in IRAF like strings. In fact, I haven't even found a difference between them. Is there? Seems risky.

Jason

---

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Oct 13, 2008

Internally, a 'char' and a 'string' type declaration are the same. I'm not sure whether this started as a convenience or was intended to allow strings to grow thru concatenation. As for 'risky', nobody seems to complain too much about stuff like this in loosely-typed languages like Python ...........

Cheers,
-Mike

---

Last post on Oct 13, 2008