Scientific Computing & Visualization | Documentation | Software Help | Mathematics and Data Analysis

This Site

IDL Basics

Description

IDL (Interactive Data Language) is a general-purpose scientific computing package which supports data manipulation, curve-fitting, triangulation, gridding, matrix manipulation, statistics, image processing and solution of systems of equations. Supported means of graphical display of data include graphing, surface plotting, contouring, volume visualization and animation. IDL uses a command-driven/programming-like interface and displays graphics using X Windows. Data input and output is simple. Graphics output can be sent to a number of devices, including: X, CGM, HP-GL, PostScript, Macintosh display and Microsoft Windows.
Highlights: IDL is a mature packaged evolved through years of use by scientists. Runs under X Windows. If users are at all comfortable with programming, they will be able to perform calculations and produce graphics without many of the 'irrelevant' aspects of programming. Graphic output quality is pretty good and the annotation capabilities are better than some other packages.

Availability and Setup

IDL (Interactive Data Language) version 7.1 is currently available on the Linux and Katana Cluster machines. Version 6.4 is available on the pSeries machines.

Set things up so that you can run IDL as an X application on katana, twister, or another appropriate machine and have it display to your local machine/terminal.

Finally, to run IDL on katana, type:

katana% idl

A graphical IDL development environment is also available and can be accessed by typing:

katana% idlde

Using IDL

At the IDL prompt you can type commands like:

IDL> orig = sin((findgen(200)/35)^2.5)       
IDL> plot,orig       
IDL> exit

or run an interactive demo program

IDL> demo

Additional Help/Documentation

On-line help from within IDL: type a question mark (?) at the IDL prompt. This will open a window, providing access to all the online manuals that come with IDL. (Note that the command HELP exists but only gives information on the current IDL session and not on the commands). You can also visit the IDL Tutorial WWW Page, for an online version of an SCV IDL Tutorial.

Online documentation is also available by typing idlhelp from the command line. Version 6.4 pdf documenation is also available here. Older hardcopy IDL documentation is available in the Computer Graphics Lab (Room 203, 111 Cummington Street, lab hours and access). For additional information on IDL on the WWW, visit the IDL home page. This web site may also be helpful: Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming.

IDL-supplied examples may be found on katana and twister in: /usr/local/idl/examples Also, there are SCV-written examples which go with the SCV IDL tutorial mentioned above.

Document Name: idl
Author/Maintainer: Aaron D. Fuegi (aarondf@bu.edu), Erik Brisson (ebrisson@bu.edu), and Wayne Gilmore (waygil@bu.edu)
Executable: /usr/local/bin/idl
Keywords: idl, data, analysis, visualization, language
Machines List: IBM p655, Linux Cluster
Related Help Pages: IDL Tutorial, IDL Examples
Created May 22, 1995; Last Revised August 6, 2009; Last Modified August 11, 2009
URL of this document: http://scv.bu.edu/documentation/software-help/mathematics/idl.html
Go up to SCV Software Packages

OIT | CCS | August 11, 2009