Temporarily coerce an object into changing its shape.

CALL DAT_COERC( LOC1, NDIM, LOC2, STATUS )

LOC1 = CHARACTER $\ast$ ( DAT__SZLOC ) (Given)

NDIM = INTEGER (Given)

LOC2 = CHARACTER $\ast$ ( DAT__SZLOC ) (Returned)

STATUS = INTEGER (Given and Returned)

If the number of dimensions in the object is to be increased, each additional dimension size is set to 1, e.g. if loc1 is associated with a 2-D object of shape (512,256) say, setting ndim to 3 transforms the dimensions to (512,256,1). Likewise, if the number of dimensions is to be reduced, the appropriate trailing dimension sizes are discarded; the routine will fail if any of these do not have the value 1. As with DAT_VEC, only the appearance of the object is changed – the original shape remains intact.