IDL

At present, we do not offer a comprehensive package for DDSCAT\ data postprocessing and graphical display in IDL. However, there are several developments worth mentioning: First, we offer several output capabilities from within DDSCAT: ASCII (see §9.1), FORTRAN unformatted binary (see §9.2), and netCDF portable binary (see §9.3). Second, we offer several skeleton IDL utilities:

• bhmie.pro is our translation to IDL of the popular Bohren-Huffman code which calculates efficiencies for spherical particles using Mie theory.
• readbin.pro reads the FORTRAN unformatted binary file written by routine writebin.f. The variables are stored in a common block.
• readnet.pro reads NetCDF portable binary file and should be the method of choice for IDL users. It offers random data access.
• mie.pro is an example of an interface to binary files and the Bohren-Huffman code. It plots a comparison of DDSCAT results with scattering by equivalent radius spheres.

At present the IDL code is experimental.