PHYS-4007/5007 Course IDL Web Home Page
This web page contains the links of the various IDL procedure files that
students in PHYS-4007/5007 can use to carry out their homework and use
on their exams. The files here are in standard ASCII (text) format so that
when you click on the link, the code will appear in your web browser.
Follow these steps to save these files on your Windows machine.
- Open the Notepad editor by selecting the Windows icon on the
lower left of your computer screen, then click on the "All Programs"
item. Once the list of programs appears, select "Accessories" then
"Notepad." This utility is the standard Windows text (i.e., ASCII)
editor.
- Go to your web browser and highlight all of the text on the screen
using the "Edit" pull-down menu and clicking "Select All."
- Go back to the "Edit" pull-down menu and select "Copy."
- Go to the Notepad window and select the "Edit" pull-down menu and
select "Paste."
- From the Notepad window, go to the "File" pull-down and select
"Save As ..." Find the directory (i.e., folder) where you want to
store this file. Finally enter the file name of the file making
sure that you use '.pro' instead of '.txt' as the filename suffix and
that you enclose your filename in double quotes (e.g., "sampleplot.pro")
If you do not include the double quotes, Notepad will attach a '.txt' at
the end of your filename (which you do not want to do).
Dr. Luttermoser's IDL Files for Download
Note that as the semester progresses, additional IDL procedure files will be
included on this web page.
The stustartup.pro procedure is used to compile and run procedures
upon start up in IDL. One should activate this file through the
following steps:
- Create a directory in your login directory (here assumed to be
named C:\home) called idl.
- CD to this diectory and make a subdirectory called startup.
- CD to the startup directory and place this file (named
stustartup.pro) and workdir.pro into the startup directory.
- Open IDL Workbench. Once the GUI appears, select the "Window"
pull-down menu near the top of the GUI and select the
"Preferences" item (at the bottom).
- Once the "Preferences" GUI appears, select "IDL" on the left
side list.
- In this GUI, put the complete path/file name of this procedure
in the "Startup file" box: e.g., C:\home\idl\startup\stustartup.pro .
- In the "Initial working directory" box, I suggest the inserting
the following: C:\home\idl (again asumming your login directory
is "C:\home".
- Click the "Apply" button followed by the "OK" button.
- Exit out of the IDL Workbench utility, then restart IDL. Once
the login is complete, a GUI should appear asking you to select
a working directory (C:\home\idl should be highlighted). Chose
whatever diecrtory you want to work.
- Then any software you need to open or create will easily be
found and any hardcopy graphics you create will be located in
that directory.
Students, make sure you change the string for the MYDEFDIR in
workdir.pro to reflect your preferred initial working directory
on your machine for workdir to start its search from for a current
working directory.
Click here to go back to the Computational Physics home page.
Last modified: August 24, 2015 by D.G. Luttermoser