How to obtain IDL command line behaviour in IDL notebooks.

[AvijeetPrasad]

When using IDL command line, we can easily print a variable value directly by typing the variable name as shown below

IDL> x = indgen(3)
IDL> x
       0       1       2

However, in the notebook, we need to print the variable and not type it directly as shown below

x = indgen(3)
print, x

I was wondering if there is a way to avoid typing print every time and use some kind of "magic" command, say % or ! to mimic the command line behaviour directly.

[znorman-harris]

Sorry for missing this! It's on our list to look at doing. The challenge is that the IDL Console has a special way to determine if a command should do implied print or not.

All notebook cells run as main level programs, so we will have to add in logic for this.

I'll take a look at it here in the next couple of weeks and see what it would take to implement.

[znorman-harris]

FYI just published a release of this. I updated our example "hello world" notebook that comes with the extension, but in general, it should match the IDL Console.

Here's some examples: