Additional Topics > External Development Guide > IDL Internals - Keyword Processing

# IDL Internals - Keyword Processing

Keyword arguments are an important IDL language feature. They allow a multitude of options to be specified to a routine in a straightforward, easily understood way. The price of this added power is that it is somewhat more complicated to write a routine that accepts keywords than one that doesn’t. However, the additional effort is well worth it.

Please see the following topics for more information on Keyword Processing:

Creating Routines that Accept Keywords

Overview of IDL Keyword Processing

IDL_KW_PAR

IDL_KW_ARR_DESC_R

Keyword Processing Options

KW_RESULT

Processing Keywords - IDL_KWProcessByOffset()

Cleaning Up - IDL_KW_FREE Macro

Keyword Examples

Older Keyword API