Hi, I can only comment on your first point. I discovered the same when I migrated from an very old version IDL6.2 to IDL8.2. I too had 'exit /no_confirm' in my program. This worked fine in IDL6.2, but periodically worked in IDL8.2 What I discovered was that if there was a file open in the workspace, then IDL did not exit properly. With no file open, it exitted properly everytime. I thought it was a timing issue, so I placed a delay before the exit command, but that didn't solve it. I did raise a support call, but it didn't get resolved. Lee

Hi Lee, Thanks for the tip on the open program in the workspace. I wouldn't have thought of it. So basically, I should make sure that there are no open files in the workspace that the save file runs from, I'll try it out of course. Did you need at any point to run more than one IDL simultaneously?in windows of course. Maybe you might know how to tell IDL to always open the same workspace, even if there are two IDL sessions running? When I was using older IDL versions, like IDL 6.3/6.4, I could run 10 different programs at the same time without having to actually be there and tell IDL which workspace to load and so on. This whole workspace business has really completely messed up with the whole "automatization" [if such a work exists] of working with IDL. Thanks MariLiza

Hi MariLiza, For your first question, I think it would be best if you try the following procedure for creating files with exit in them. I tested this on my Windows machine in IDL 8.4.1. Here is the code and example to test that it works: pro exit_procedure_test exit end Once you save this as a .pro file named 'exit_procedure_test.pro', issue the following commands in the IDLDE (workbench). .f ;this extends to .full_reset_session when typed in the IDL Console .compile exit_procedure_test resolve_all, /CONTINUE_ON_ERROR save, file ='exit_procedure_test.sav', /routine .f ;reset the session once more to clear memory restore, 'exit_procedure_test.sav' exit_procedure_test ;this will run the restored procedure, notice that there is no compiled module statement If this does work, then you may want to apply the same process to your other programs to generate the save files in this method. For your second question, if you are trying to do batch processing with IDL you will need to use IDL from the command prompt, not the IDLDE with the graphical interface. You are asked for a new workspace each time the IDLDE is opened because there are files with your preferences which get saved each time you exit the IDLDE. These files are opened, and remain active, in the first session of the IDLDE that starts. There cannot be multiple instances of the IDLDE accessing and writing these files at the same time. If you have a list of save files that you want to process then you can create a batch script in IDL to restore these save files. This is not the same as a batch script which gets executed by the command prompt, however. You may want to read the following documentation page regarding batch jobs in IDL. I think that it may help provide insight to what you are trying to do. http://www.exelisvis.com/docs/BatchJobs.html