function get_numrecords,file,HEADER=header
;
; *** Determine and return the number of records in a given file
; *** Note: header = number of records to skip before ingesting data
;
    if(NOT KEYWORD_SET(header)) then header=0
    spawn,'wc -l ' + file,result
    a = strsplit(result,' ',/extract)         
    nrecs = a(0)*1L - header
;    print,'There are ',nrecs,' records in ',file
    return,nrecs
    end