I have been interested in creating a better command line interface to IDL for a long time. I have been using the wonderful IPython interface to Python since I began programming in Python a couple years ago and I always have wanted the equivalent interface for IDL.
My goals for the project are:
- implement all the functionality of normal command line IDL
- use GNU Readline to get a lot of command line editing power including tab-completions for filenames, routine names, variable names, keyword names, etc. and better history searching
- make
.editwork on the command line (it works for the IDL Workbench and the old IDLDE, but not command line IDL) - add useful “magic commands” i.e. meta-commands that are handled by an rIDL pre-processor
My current prototype at least addresses each of these ideas.
Check out the screencast showing my progress so far. I would like to get all the current IDL command line functionality into rIDL before making a formal release, but expect some type of pre-release soon.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Keep me informed – that is exciting.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:35 am
This is great news! I had started to work on something like this a while back but had no time to make it fully working. I look forward to testing rIDL!!!
July 30th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn’t the idlwave editor already do this? What am I missing? I don’t use iPython either so maybe that’s it.
Cheers
July 30th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
While I use Emacs sometimes, it is not my text editor of choice any longer. Even when using Emacs, I only used the text editing mode, not the shell. I would prefer a normal command line application which is enhanced in certain ways. Many don’t want to use Emacs at all.
July 30th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Not sure if its possible but a feature request: The ability to click move the cursor within a line of text on the command line.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 am
How about automatically recompiling a function or procedure whenever a new version is detected? That is, when a function or procedure is called, it will be recompiled if a new version exists. Matlab does this…
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Hi, Liam! It’s funny you bring this up; I had the same request from a MATLAB user last week. I can see that this would be convenient for a user, but wouldn’t it slow IDL?
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Would this only be for the routine called directly from the command line or routines called subsequently too?
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