PV-Wave to IDL migration

Useful links

How to use IDL's FFT
SCV IDL tutorial on the web
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming
Reading ASCII Data Files

Online manuals

% idlman (from Unix shell prompt)
IDL> spawn,'idlman' (from IDL prompt)

PV-Wave to IDL migration

Many Optics group programs, scripts and configurations are set up to use PV-Wave and require some tweaking in order to run properly under IDL. Below are a few hints and fixes to help in the migration from Wave to IDL.

Configuration and setup

Include the following lines in your .cshrc (csh/tcsh) or .profile (ksh) setup file

(.cshrc) source /usr/local/rsi/idl/bin/idl_setup:+~/idl

(.cshrc) setenv IDL_STARTUP ~/idl/idlstartup

(.profile) export IDL_DIR=+/usr/local/rsi/idl:+~/idl

(.profile) export IDL_STARTUP=~/idl/idlstartup

Create your own directory "idl" in your home directory where you can locate all your idl programs
Create your own 'idlstartup' file or copy home\paterson\idl\idlstartupand locate this file in your idl directory. The startup file should include the path to your 'idl' directory with the command !path=!path+':~/idl'
If you already have a 'wave' directory within which are all your wave programs you can simply create a symbolic link between your wave and idl directories. Most of your wave programs should run in idl.

Development environment

In addition to the command line tools, IDL contains a GUI environment with built-in editor. To access this, type 'idlde' rather than 'idl' at the command prompt in UNIX. If you use idlde setting your paths and startup files can be done through the Preferences menu in the File menu.

Equivalents

WAVE	IDL
help	?
info	help
dc_read_free	readcolumns (or read_ascii)

Created: 1 May 98

Last modified:
Maintainer: Anton Barty, School of Physics, Email: a.barty@hysics.unimelb.edu.au
Authorised by: Robert Scholten, School of Physics, Email: r.scholten at physics.unimelb.edu.au
This page, its contents and style, are the responsibility of the author and do not represent the views, policies or opinions of The University of Melbourne.