Re: Socket!

[ronn kling <ronn(at)rlkling.com>]

in article 94m3t3$joa$1@nnrp1.deja.com, landsman@my-deja.com at
landsman@my-deja.com wrote on 1/24/01 12:31 AM:

> Has anyone tried to use the Unix/Windows SOCKET procedure in IDL V5.4,
> or thought about ways that it might be useful?     It looks to me like
> it should allow one to read a file on an anonymous FTP server, but I
> haven't figured out the syntax for this.   (I have no previous socket
> programming  experience in other languages, so I am proceeding
> naively...)
> 
I have experimented some with it, but I prefer to use Randall Franks
implementation of sockets (The dll is on my web site at
http://www.rlkling.com/freeware/dlms.htm ).

But yes, sockets are extremely useful for both pure IDL and interfacing with
C programs. I recently helped someone who wanted to run a mix of IDL and C
applications on different machines and pass the results back to a "master"
IDL program for compilation and display. So you can use these to implement a
parallel processing architecture (Shameless plug coming... If anyone is
interested in doing parallel processing with IDL I have something up and
running, just contact me.)

I expect, but haven't tried it, that sockets would be great for applications
that need to access real time information over the web. Something like
weather or stock market data comes to mind.

-Ronn


--
Ronn Kling
Ronn Kling Consulting
email: ronn@rlkling.com
"Application Development with IDL"  programming book updated for IDL5.4!
"Calling C from IDL, Using DLM's to extend you IDL code" NEW BOOK!
Shareware and Freeware at: http://www.rlkling.com/