This attribute specifies the maximum length to use when writing out text through the sink function supplied when the StcsChan was created. It is ignored if the Indent attribute is zero (in which case the text supplied to the sink function can be of any length). The default value is 70.

The number of characters in each string written out through the sink function will not usually be greater than the value of this attribute (but may be less). However, if any single word in the STC-S description exceeds the specified length, then the word will be written out as a single line.

Note, the default value of zero is unlikely to be appropriate when an StcsChan is used within Fortran code. In this case, StcsLength should usually be set to the size of the CHARACTER variable used to receive the text returned by AST_GETLINE within the sink function. In addition, the Indent attribute should be set non-zero. This avoids the possibility of long lines being truncated invisibly within AST_GETLINE.

StcsChan