Re: Reading from process pipes in IDL?

[gfirem1(at)umbc.edu (Gwyn Fireman)]

Benno Puetz (puetz@mpipsykl.mpg.de) wrote:
: I have been trying to read image data from compressed (*.gz) files.
: I would prefer a way similar to PERL's
:     open(FILE, "gzip -cd $file |");

Benno -

If you know the array size in advance, you can use the -c flag to gunzip
to stdout and capture the output in a unit pipe: 

IDL> imagedata=intarr(1325,800)
IDL> spawn, 'gunzip -c testdata.dat.Z', unit=dataunit 
IDL> readu,dataunit,imagedata 
IDL> free_lun,dataunit 
IDL> help,imagedata 
IMAGEDATA       INT       = Array[1325, 800] 


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