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.