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Berkeley IDL Users

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IDL is the Interactive Data Language. It has become a popular tool for data analysis and visualization around these parts. This page is here for a few reasons:

• Berkeleyans have some useful code to contribute to the world.
• It's nice to have a gateway to the most useful IDL resources on the internet.
• The UCB Astronomy Department has an IDL Users Mailing List. Pertinent useful information offered to this forum will be collected here.

IDL Testimonials:

• Here is what the HST folks say about how IDL saved their lives.
• Here is what Josh Simon says about how IDL saved his life.

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Setting Up Your IDL Environment

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Berkeley User Code

• Erik Rosolowsky
• John "JohnJohn" Johnson -- John John, John John IDL John John. John.

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IDL Sites and Tutorials

• comp.lang.idl-pvwav Newsgroup (Archive) - The best place to ask/search for IDL help. There are some real black belts here.
• Carl Heiles's IDL tutorials - for his AY250 class on Numerical Data Analysis and Presentation. Here you'll find write-ups on:
  • Quick IDL Tutorial Number One -->
  • Quick IDL Tutorial Number Two -- IDL Datatypes and Organizational Structures
  • Image Display in IDL
  • Design and Display of Color Images
  • Fourier Transforms
  • Least Squares Fitting
• IDL tutorials for the UCB Undergraduate Astronomy Lab
• Guide to IDL Programming - by David Fanning.
  • His Tips are really useful.
  • So is his book, IDL Programming Techniques; there's a copy in room 709.
• IDL Tech Tips & IDL User-Contributed Code - These are straight from RSI. RSI developed IDL.
• Goddard IDL Astronomy User's Library - An incredible central repository for low-level astronomy IDL software.
• Links to other Astronomy IDL sites - A thorough list of links to very useful astronomy IDL sites.
• IDLWAVE - If you're using Emacs.

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FAQ

I'm running IDL in an xterm. Sometimes my command line becomes so long that it wraps to the next line. When I notice that I typed prnit rather than print, I can't access the line above. What's the deal?

Your xterm is not set to enable Reverse Wraparound. Type <SHIFT>-<MIDDLE BUTTON> in the xterm and select "Enable Reverse Wraparound" or start your xterm with the -rw flag.

Where do all the locally contributed procedures live? I want to use them on my laptop.

From your sun account:

> cd /usr/local/rsi/idl
> tar cf ~/ulib.tar ulib
Then copy ~/ulib.tar to your laptop's /usr/local/rsi/idl directory. Then on your laptop:

> cd /usr/local/rsi/idl
> tar xf ulib.tar

When I try to start IDL on my laptop, it says that I don't have a valid host for the license. It was working fine when I was away at XXX. What do I do now?

Probably, the hostname in the license file is set to what it was at XXX. Edit /usr/local/rsi/license/license.dat. Change the hostname there to match your current hostname (which you can get by typing hostname or uname -n.)

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To get on/off the Berkeley IDL Users mailing list, or suggest a link: HERE.

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$LastChangedDate:: 2007-02-27#$