🚀 go-pugleaf

I have used both IDl and Matlab for both signal processing and 
image processing.  As others have correctly said, Matlab is stronger
for signal processing and IDL for image processing.  However, IDL has
one important feature that caused me to settle on it for almost all of
my work in both areas:  It can handle bytes, 16  and 32 bit integers, 
floats, doubles, and complex.  Matlab is restricted to only doubles and
complex....a very severe restriction if you must work with huge arrays
as I often do.

IDL allows routines written in other languages such as C and Fortran to
be hooked into it.  Therefore, I write for instance, digital filter programs
in C and then hook them into IDL at run time.  I also have written a set of
routines that allow me to manipulate Exabyte tape drives from within IDL (using
the hooks mentioned above).  This way I can analyze several Gbytes of radar 
signal data straight from tape without having to first put the data on disk.
I do not know if this can be done from Matlab; perhaps someone will comment 
on this.

There is an anonymous ftp site with hundreds of well written IDL routines
of general interest.  It is fermi.jhuapl.edu.  Get into idl-pvwave and then
the next level down which I think is called jhuapl.  By the way, most of these
routines will also run under pv-wave, but I prefer IDL.

			Regards, bruce
--
Bruce L. Gotwols
Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Lab., Laurel MD 20723
Internet:  gotwols@warper.jhuapl.edu   (128.244.27.2) 
SPAN:      APLSP::STR::GOTWOLS