Calling IDL, GDL, and FL from Python

Thanks to Anthony Smith's pIDLy module, accessing IDL, and its clones GDL and FL from within Python becomes really easy. 

Launch an IPython session, then typing these example lines to see pidly in action:

I1 import pidly

I2 idl = pidly.IDL()

I3 fl = pidly.IDL('fl', idl_prompt='FL> ')

I4 gdl = pidly.IDL('gdl', idl_prompt='GDL> ')

I5 idl.findgen(10)

O5 array([ 0.,  1.,  2.,  3.,  4.,  5.,  6.,  7.,  8.,  9.], dtype=float32)

I6 fl.findgen(10)

O6 array([ 0.,  1.,  2.,  3.,  4.,  5.,  6.,  7.,  8.,  9.], dtype=float32)

I7 gdl.findgen(10)

O7 array([ 0.,  1.,  2.,  3.,  4.,  5.,  6.,  7.,  8.,  9.], dtype=float32)

I8 np.arange(10, dtype='float32')

O8 array([ 0.,  1.,  2.,  3.,  4.,  5.,  6.,  7.,  8.,  9.], dtype=float32)

Testing these with:

I2 pidly.__version__

O2 '0.2.4+'

I3 np.__version__

O3 '1.8.0.dev-82c0bb8'

$ idl

IDL Version 8.1 (linux x86_64 m64). (c) 2011, ITT Visual Information Solutions

$ gdl    # the version that ships with Fedora 16

GDL - GNU Data Language, Version 0.9.2

$ fl      # latest development snapshot (10/Oct/2012)

Fawlty Language 0.79.18 (linux amd64 m64) Copyright (c) 2000-2012

Example access to an IDL procedure:

I5 idl.pro('cgplot', np.sin(np.linspace(0, 6*np.pi, 1000)))

I6 idl.pro('iplot', np.sin(np.linspace(0, 6*np.pi, 1000)))

For more information, just read the quick usage guide on pidly's web-site, or clone the source from https://github.com/anthonyjsmith/pIDLy