Message of the Day Files

When IDL starts, it displays the contents of the motd.txt file, located in the help/motd subdirectory of the IDL distribution, in the Output Log. You can use this Message of the Day file to provide information to IDL users every time IDL starts.

In addition, IDL will display the contents a file with the name platform.txt located in the help/motd subdirectory of the IDL distribution, where platform is a string corresponding to the current operating system platform. For example, on Linux systems, IDL displays a file named linux.txt.

You can determine the correct name for this file on a given platform by using the following IDL command:

PRINT, !VERSION.OS 

and appending the ".txt" extension to the operating system name.

If you do not want to see either the motd.txt file or the platform-specific file each time IDL starts, remove them from the help/motd subdirectory of the IDL distribution.

Note
The motd.txt and platform-specific files are simply an ASCII text files—not IDL programs or batch files. To execute a series of IDL commands, select a startup file as described in Startup File.