4 Input and Output

A common scenario in the real world goes something like this: You’ve acquired a set of data, either from measurement or simulation. The data set exists in a file on disk in a format that is specific to the sensor or environment that generated the data. Your task is to read the data into IDL in order to analyze and/or visualize it. The data set could be as simple as a text file containing two columns of numbers, or as complex as a satellite image containing millions of measurements and dozens of items of information that describe the data (known as metadata). You also may want to read or write industry-standard data formats (e.g., TIFF, DICOM) or self-describing platform-independent formats such as netCDF or HDF.

Fortunately, ...

Get Practical IDL Programming now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.