Starting IDL

The easiest way to start IDL is by launching the IDL Workbench, which is an Eclipse-based graphical user interface.

You can also run IDL in command-line mode, which uses a text-only interface and sends output to your terminal screen or shell window. See Command-line Options for IDL Startup for details.

To launch IDL:

Operating System	Workbench	Command Line
Windows 64-bit	Start > IDL x.x	Start > IDL x.x IDL Command Line
Mac 64-bit	Double-click on the idl icon in your IDL installation folder or Enter idlde at the X11 Terminal window shell prompt	Click on the idl icon in your IDL installation folder or Enter idl at the X11 Terminal window shell prompt
Linux 64-bit	Enter idlde at the shell prompt	Enter idl at the shell prompt
	To launch IDL from the shell prompt, you must first explicitly open a terminal window and set up each IDL user's environment.

Quitting IDL

To quit IDL from the command line, type EXIT.