To access your own directory of functions and procedures, you will need to append your own directory after IDL’s default path using the IDL_PATH environment variable (under UNIX): % setenv IDL_PATH ":/your/path/here" (Setting the Windows environment variable IDL_PATH to a similar string would produce the same result on a Windows system.) This substitution allows you to set up your paths without having to hard-code IDL’s defaults into your startup scripts or environment variables.