[slang-users] slciftsio bug fix (plus optional change)

[arik.mitschang@xxxxxxxxx]

Hi John,

I ran across a bug in cfitsio in the handling of string columns whose
TDIMn keyword is specified. In the example I have, a 32 character string
has the TDIMn=(32), which, according to the standard, is valid, but the
slang fits implementation (specifically the higher level fits_read_*
functions) attempts to convert this to a [nrow,32] array. The following
fix works for my case, and hopefully more generally.

Also included in the patch is a change of behaviour: when tdim specifies
an array of exactly a single element, do not reshape to [nrow,1]. I
personally find that more appropriate.

Cheers,
-Arik

--- /usr/local/share/slsh/local-packages/fits.sl	2013-02-04 12:15:16.471742949 +1100
+++ fits.sl	2013-09-25 15:36:23.682466822 +1000
@@ -768,10 +768,13 @@
 	variable col = columns[i];
 	variable data = data_arrays[i];
 	variable tdim = tdims[i];
-	if (tdim != NULL)
+	if (tdim != NULL && _typeof(data)!= String_Type)
 	  {
-	     tdim = convert_tdim_string (tdim, want_num_rows);
-	     reshape (data, tdim);
+	      if (tdim != "(1)")
+	      {
+		  tdim = convert_tdim_string (tdim, want_num_rows);
+		  reshape (data, tdim);
+	      }
 	  }
 	else if (typeof (data) == Array_Type)
 	  {