;  This is a VERY simple IDL program
;  the semi-colons designate comments -- everything after a semi is ignored
;
;  To start the program, tell IDL the names of the data file to be read
;  The number 1 is equivalenced to the filename
;
openr,1,'parallax.dat'
;
;  Now define the variable
;  There will be 1998 rows read in, each with 5 elements
;
data=fltarr(5,1998)
;
line = 'this is a junk line'
;  First read the 3 header lines which contain a String of characters
readf,1,line
readf,1,line
;  Now this does the reading of the data

readf,1,data

;  And now you're done, so close the file

close,1

end