Maintainer: O.Cordes

Location: /vol/software/software/tools/idl

Alternative: you can add /vol/software/software/tools/idl/bin to your PATH variable. Then you have idl, idl70, idl71 commands.

To use IDL you should set the IDL_PATH variable to ":+/vol/software/software/tools/idl/IDLVERS/lib" :

bash: export IDL_PATH=":+/vol/software/software/tools/idl/IDLVERS/lib"

csh:   setenv IDL_PATH ":+/vol/software/software/tools/idl/IDLVERS/lib" 

(replace IDLVERS with idl70 or idl71!)

 

Note: The number of IDL licences available in the institute is limited.We have actually 20 licences for IDL 7.1 and 6 licences for IDL 7.0 (the 7.1 licences are also valid for 7.0!).

To see, how much licences are occupied please use the following command:

/vol/software/software/tools/idl/idl71/bin/lmstat -a

 

To give other users a fair chance to work with IDL, please quit your IDL session when you are done with your task. Also, please avoid using more  than one IDL session at a time.

Most important, make sure to quit your IDL session before you leave for the holidays to give those who have to work access to IDL!

One alternative maybe the open source clone for IDL, GDL (GNU Data Language). According to its WEB site (http://gnudatalanguage.sourceforge.net/) it now supports IDL features up to version 7.1. So this should fit the needs of most IDL users.  The current version is also installed on all AIfA Ubuntu machines; just call 'gdl'. Perhaps you could consider giving it a try. This would certainly help to solve the IDL licensing issues.