Copying Variables

To copy the contents of one variable to another, use the IDL_VarCopy() function:

If the destination variable already has a dynamic part, this dynamic part is released.

The destination becomes a copy of the source.

If the source is a temporary variable, IDL_VarCopy() does not make a duplicate of the dynamic part for the destination. Instead, the dynamic part of the source is given to the destination, and the source variable itself is returned to the pool of free temporary variables. This is the equivalent of freeing the temporary variable. Therefore, the variable must not be used any further and the caller should not explicitly free the variable. This optimization significantly improves resource utilization and performance because this special case occurs frequently.