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Next: 1.6.1 The IDL HELP Up: 1 INTRODUCTION Previous: 1.5 Accessing Other Directories

1.6 Obtaining Help

 Users can obtain online information in several ways, including the operating system help utilities, the IDL command HELP, and the IDL procedures called DOC_LIBRARY and PROLOG. Each of these is described below.

First, you may be able to ``spawn'' to the operating system to access the help utilities available on your machine (if your machine supports such things). For example, on the IUE alpha VMS HELP is available. To use VMS HELP you may type

$HELP
or
SPAWN,'HELP'

at the IDL prompt. On UNIX systems you may access man pages in the same way.



 


2/9/1998