How to Start Up in IDL

There are two modes of IDL. One is the "regular" IDL where you your commands in on a shell window. For example:

lime:~: idl What you type is shown in bold
IDL>

To exit/quit idl, type exit at the idl prompt:

IDL> exit

While you're in IDL you have two choices to perform you work. One is to compile programs and the other is to work interactively. Working interactively will not end up saving your work, but it's a relatively quick way to test commands. Here's an example.

IDL> A = [3,6,9,12]
IDL> B = [2,4,6,8]
IDL> Plot, A, B

The other mode is the "Development Environment." To enter the development environment, you type "idlde" at the command line prompt and IDL will be booted into a GUI (graphical user interface) mode.

Click here for a jpeg view of what idlde looks like in X windows (Unix based system).