Last updated: 2000-January-5
You have to opportunities to insert customized startup information into your IDL setup. Both are done in files in your home directory. In the file "~/.idl_setup", you can insert Unix commands (definition of IDL environment variables, etc). In the file "~/.idlstart.pro", you can write a procedure "myidlstart" that will be executed right after IDL finish the standared Deepsearch startup.
In the "~/.idl_setup" file, one common thing to do is to add your own personal directories of IDL routines to the IDL_PATH. Just doing this by overwriting the IDL_PATH is dangerous; of the standard setup IDL_PATH changes, and you've got a hardcoded copy, a lot of things could stop working for you. This has in fact happened for a number of people at least once in the past. The best way to do it is to either add things to the path directly:
setenv IDL_PATH /my/favorite/idl/directory ${IDL_PATH}
or, using the Perl utility "normpath" (less $DEEPHOME/bin/normpath for
documentattion):
setenv IDL_PATH `$DEEPHOME/bin/normpath IDL_PATH ~/idlpro:~/idl/idlpro:/my/favorite/idl/directory ""`
Currently, trivial examples of both of these files can be found in Rob Knop's home directory on either the Suns or the PCs, for instance:
/home/astro10/rknop/.idl_setup /home/astro10/rknop/.idlstart.pro