Command Line Tips and Tricks
Entering text at the command line allows you to perform ad hoc analysis, compile and launch applications, and create $MAIN$ programs. IDL provides some valuable command line functionality to support these tasks. See the following sections for details.
Note
Also see Recording IDL Command Line Input for information on maintaining the history of an IDL session in a file.
Copying and Pasting Multiple IDL Code Lines
You can paste multiple lines of text from the clipboard to the command line. You simply need to place some text in the clipboard and paste it into the command line. Any source of text is valid, with emphasis on the requirement that the text be convertible to ASCII.
When you are using the tty-based command line version of IDL and you paste multiple lines, make sure that they contain only a single IDL command or are statements containing line continuation characters ($). Multi-line statements will produce unintended IDL interpreter behavior or errors. Lines are transferred to the command line as is. Namely, leading white space is not removed and comment lines are sent to the IDL interpreter without distinction.
If you are using the IDL Workbench, you can paste multiple statements directly into the Command Line view. You can also drag single or multiple lines from the Command History view to the Command Line view.
