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My name is Jim Dull and I am working with Haldan Cohn using IRAF on some spectra obtain at La Palma. We seem to be having some problems with IRAF imfort routines and were hoping you might be able to help. The program aborts while attempting to call routines 'imakwc' or 'impkwc' to add needed information to the header. We believe that these routines might have a limit with the size of header they can handle. Specifically, the routines indicate that the program stopped at 'zdojmp'. (The headers are well below the 404 line limit that is cited in v2.8 and we can still add keywords to the header via hedit.)What I would like to know is: is there a header size limit to these imfort routines? If so, is there a way around this limit while still using these routines?I appreciate your assistance with this matter.
J. Dull

Jim, Can you add keywords using your program to a different sort of
data file? You can make a small, writable file that has a clone of the
Kitt Peak header by copying a section of dev$pix: im> imcopy dev$pix[256,*] foo
im> yourprog foo keywd "Test keyword" # or whateverAlso, it is not clear exactly what you mean by "stopped at zdojmp".
Does the process crash with some sort of access violation and there
is a traceback that shows the process was in zdojmp? Are there no
error messages emitted? If you cannot get your program to work on a test image made
as per the imcopy line above, perhaps you should send a copy of the
program, along with some of the keywords and values that you are
trying to add. It may be necessary to get an example data header
from you at some point as well. I'm sorry I can't solve the problem right off for you.
There is a limit to the number of FITS-like lines that can be added
to a header as you know, but this is not likely to be the problem;
you seem to have ruled this out yourself by using hedit. I will
be out of the office at the beginning of next week, so you should
send any follow-up information to iraf@noao.edu again, not to my
personal mail address.Chris Biemesderfer
IRAF Group, NOAO
iraf@noao.edu