Next: UV Data Sets
Up: MIRIAD Subroutine Library
Previous: Text I/O
MIRIAD makes few distinctions between what some systems (e.g. GIPSY,
AIPS and FITS) call ``data'' and ``header''.
Instead a data ``file'' (usually called a data set in this
document) consists of a collection of items. Some
items are small (a few bytes) whereas others are large (e.g. the collection
of pixels in an image). All items are accessed by their name (a lower case
string of up to 8 alphanumeric characters. Underscore and dollar
characters are to be avoided). Convention dictates the names
assigned to the various items within a data set. For example, the
item name ``image'' is always used to store the pixel data of an image,
``naxis'' is the number of dimensions in an image, and ``naxis1'' is
the number of pixels along the first axis of an image. New
sorts of data items can be invented as the need arises.
What would be conventionally call header variables, are stored as small items.
The naming convention is close to the FITS standard (though the names are
lower case).
The following sections describe routines that in some way package together
several calls to the lower level i/o routines. Their first argument is
a ``handle'' returned by one of the open routines.
Next: UV Data Sets
Up: MIRIAD Subroutine Library
Previous: Text I/O
Last generated by rsault@atnf.csiro.au on 14 Mar 1996