Re: looking for some software to convert idl format data to text

[Liam Gumley <Liam.Gumley(at)ssec.wisc.edu>]

Helin Wei wrote:
> I have to convert some data which is saved in IDL format
> by other group using the full version of IDL to text format
> or normal binary format. We have not IDL on our local machine.
> Is there any other software that can do this conversion? Can student
> version of IDL do this job? Thanks.

Helin,

Here are some options:

(1) Convince the other group to write binary or text format data.

(2) Purchase a licensed copy of IDL (with educational discount, the cost
is < $1000).

(3) Follow the steps below to read the data:

Download and install the free demo version of IDL for any Unix platform
from
ftp://ftp.rsinc.com/pub/idl_5.2

Say the saved data was a single array named ARRAY, and it was saved in
IDL using this command:

IDL> save, array, file='data.sav'

then to restore the data in IDL, the command is

IDL> restore, file='data.sav'

To get text format output, create the following script and name it
test.pro:

restore, file='data.sav'
print, size(array)
print, array, format='(10e13.6)'
exit

Then execute the script using the following Unix command:

% idl test.pro > test.out

This will cause the contents of ARRAY to be saved as text in test.out.
The SIZE command prints the number of dimensions, the dimension values,
the data type code, and the number of elements.

Cheers,
Liam.

-- 
Liam E. Gumley
Space Science and Engineering Center, UW-Madison
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/~gumley