Reading from process pipes in IDL?

[Benno Puetz <puetz(at)mpipsykl.mpg.de>]

I have been trying to read image data from compressed (*.gz) files.

While this is possible with

    SPAWN, "gunzip "+file+".gz"

    OPENR, l, file, /GETLUN

    READU, ....

    FREE_LUN, l

I would prefer a way similar to PERL's

    open(FILE, "gzip -cd $file |");

    ...

since it would not have to decompress/compress to disk.

Is this at all possible with IDL?

--
Benno Puetz
Kernspintomographie
Max-Planck-Institut f. Psychiatrie            Tel.: +49-89-30622-413
Kraepelinstr. 10                              Fax : +49-89-30622-520
80804 Muenchen, Germany