The REF routines adhere throughout to the Starlink error-handling strategy described in the MERS document, SUN/104. Most of the routines therefore carry an integer inherited status argument called STATUS and will return without action unless this is set to the value SAI__OK1 when they are invoked. When necessary, error reports are made through the EMS_ routines in the manner described in SSN/4. This gives complete compatibility with the use of ERR_ and MSG_ routines in applications (SUN/104).
1The symbolic constant SAI__OK is defined in the include file SAE_PAR.