This is the developers' reference documentation for the IDL functions and procedures used in GBTIDL version 2.10.1. In addition to the same documentation that appears in the users' reference documentation, this includes documentation on procedures and functions of interest to GBTIDL developers.

All GBTIDL code can be found at $GBT_IDL_DIR. This may be different at each installation so use the IDL function GETENV to see what the value of that environment variable is after gbtidl has started. In Green Bank and Charlottesville, this location is /home/gbtidl/release/gbtidl for the latest release.

All of the NRAO-developed or modified code can be found in the pro directory tree under that top-level directory. This reference manual was made from the comments in the IDL code found there. The 4 directories with code are described here. The files describing the spectrum and continuum data containers are in pro itself.

User contributed code can be found in contrib off of the top-level directory.

IDL code from other sources that gbtidl uses can all be found in the lib tree off under the top-level directory. That code is not documented here.

Warnings for library

Directories

guide	GBT Unipops-inspired IDL Data Environment. These are the procedures and function which attempt to follow the UniPOPS data processing model. They all use fields in a global structure. available at !g Many arguments are implicit and taken from that structure. The file definining that structure is at pro/guide/guide_struct.
plotter	These are the functions and procedures that together comprise the plotter used by guide. There is an internal plotter state structure that is tempting to use directly. Users and developers should avoid doing that so that we can be free to rename, add, and remove fields without worrying about other code which might depend on it. Instead, functions should be added to getstate.pro in this directory whenever information is needed from the plotter's state structure outside of other code in the plotter directory.
toolbox	These are support functions and procedures for guide. These are ignorant of the global data structure that guide uses.
toolbox/io	These are the io classes used by gbtidl.