Introduction to IDL

A short course on IDL basics. Click on each title to get the PDF for that lecture.

 

1 – Basics

  • Language Characteristics
  • Licenses and availability
  • GDL/FL
  • Libraries
  • Using IDL
  • The IDL Workbench
  • Language Structure
  • Procedures and Functions
  • Language elements
  • The 5 most used commands
  • Operators
  • Control Structures
  • Batch and journal files
  • Main programs
  • Debugger
  • Some resources

2 – Variables

  • What is a variable?
  • Types
  • Number representations and their consequences
  • Structures
  • Pointers
  • Objects
  • Examples of bugs caused by number representations

3 – Data structures and string processing

  • Arrays
  • Lists
  • Hashes / Dictionaries
  • Container choice
  • Vectorization
  • Strings
  • Basic string operations
  • Regular Expressions

4 – Files

  • Savefiles
  • CSV
  • Text
  • Netcdf / HDF
  • GeoTIFF

5 – Graphics

  • IDL Graphics systems
  • Plots
  • Images
  • Surfaces
  • Contour Plots