How to Set up an "alias" Command for IDL?
 

Hello Everybody,

I have installed IDL 7.1 on my Ubuntu 9.10. And now the
instruction says that I should set up an "alias" for it.
I do not know what to write in my "bashrc" as an alias for IDL.
These are the place of the executable command of IDL:

/IDL/idl-7.1/bin/idl
AND
/IDL/idl-7.1/bin/idlde

Note that "idl" and "idlde" are the executable files which run
the program by typing them in Terminal.

I would be very grateful if anyone could help me in how to write
an "alias" for my IDL.

With best regards,
Hassan

alias idl="/IDL/idl-7.1/bin/idl"

You might also want to post the relevant part of the documentation (or post a link to it), so we know exactly what the alias is for. I know that IDL also uses various environment variables, but I'm not sure which of these are required..

You could also consider making a symlink to the executable in one of the directories in your path (e.g. /usr/bin).

Hi Nylex,

Thanks for replying to my post.

Would you please tell me what this means:

""You could also consider making a symlink to the executable in one of the directories in your path (e.g. /usr/bin).""
And what is alias for?

Thanks.

Sorry for the delay in replying to this.

Symbolic links are files that point to other files. They're a bit like shortcuts, I guess. The actual executable (for IDL or whatever other program) can live in a directory (say, /opt/IDL/bin for the sake of argument) that may or may not be in your path and you can have a symlink for it in one of the directories that is in your path (e.g. /usr/local/bin), so you can run it without having to give the full path.

Aliases are used to give another name to a command, possibly to allow you to run a certain command with options just by typing your name. For example, I have the alias "ll" for "ls -l" (long listing format for ls).

Hope that helps.

Hi, Nylex,

Thanks for your helpful comments!

Best regards,
Hassan

No problem. Is IDL working now? Out of curiosity, what are you using it for?

HI,

I am using it to reduce some spectroscopic data taken by HIRES/Keck, UVES/VLT telescope.

Oh cool, astro stuff. I'm a solar person myself :).