I have an IDL FOR loop which is something like this: atom = G[*,k:*:215] What I would like to be able to do is to store in memory the array for each atom, say, atom_k and then call these different variables to perform further operations outside the FOR loop. Conceptually, I want to label the "atom" variable with the "k" counter somewhat like this: FOR k = 1,200 DO atom(k) = G[*,k:*:215] ENDFOR Of course, this doesn't work because "k" is no longer a label in this case. Does anyone know?