Standard Nomenclature

AAS

The American Astronomical Society.

C

C is a powerful modern language for both systems and general programming. C provides data structuring, recursion, automatic storage, a fairly standard set of control constructs, a rich set of operators, and considerable conciseness of expression. Developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the early 1970’s, C is the language used to implement the kernel of the UNIX operating system, as well as the standard UNIX utilities.

CL

The IRAF Command Language. The CL is an interpreted language designed to execute external tasks, and to manage their parameters. The CL organizes tasks into a hierarchical structure of independent packages. Tasks may be either script tasks, written in the CL, or compiled programs, written in the SPP language, and linked together to form processes. A single process may contain an arbitrary number of tasks.

The CL is itself both a task and a process. The CL process runs concurrently with the subtasks which it executes. The CL process and the process containing the subtask being executed communicate dynamically via interprocess communication, providing both a highly interactive mode of execution, as well as a batch mode.

The CL provides redirection of all i/o streams, including graphics output and cursor readback. Other facilities include menus, command logging, parameter prompting, an online help facility, a “programmable desk calculator” capability, and a learn mode. New packages and tasks are easily added by the user, and the CL environment is maintained in the user’s own directories, providing continuity from session to session.

CLIO

CL I/O. A package of SPP callable library routines, used to communicate with the CL.

FIO

File I/O. A package of SPP callable library routines, used to access files.

FITS

A “Flexible Image Transport System”. FITS is a standard data format used to transport images (pictures) between computers and institutions. Developed in the late 1970s by Donald Wells (KPNO) and Eric Greisen (NRAO), the FITS standard is now widely used for the interchange of image data between astronomical centers, and is officially sanctioned by both the AAS and the IAU.

FMTIO

Formatted I/O. A package of SPP callable library routines, used to perform formatted i/o (decoding and encoding of character strings).

Fortran

As the most widely used language for scientific computing for the past twenty years, Fortran needs no introduction. Fortran is used in the IRAF system as a sort of “super assembler” language. Programs and procedures written in the IRAF SPP language are mechanically translated into a highly portable subset of Fortran, and the Fortran modules are in turn translated into object modules by the host resident Fortran compiler. Existing numerical and other modules, already coded in the Fortran language, are easily linked with modules written in the SPP language to produce executable programs. The IRAF system and applications software does not use any Fortran i/o; all i/o facilities are provided by the IRAF program interface and virtual operating system.

GIO

Graphics I/O. A package of SPP callable library routines, used to interface to graphics and grayscale devices.

IAU

The International Astronomical Union.

IMIO

Image I/O. A package of SPP callable library routines, used to access imagefiles (bulk data arrays).

IRAF

The IRAF or “Image Reduction and Analysis Facility”, consists of a virtual operating system, a command language, a general purpose programming language (which was developed especially for IRAF), a large i/o library, a numerical library, and numerous support utilities and scientific applications programs. The system is designed to be transportable to any modern superminicomputer. When completed, the system will provide extensive facilities for general image processing, astronomical data reduction and analysis, scientific programming, and general software development.

Lroff

The Lroff text formatter is part of the portable IRAF system. The online help facilities use Lroff, and hence manual pages and other online documentation must be maintained in Lroff form. The Lroff text formatter is patterned after the UNIX Troff text formatter.

MTIO

Magnetic Tape I/O. A package of SPP callable library routines, used to read and write magnetic tapes.

Make

Make is a UNIX utility program, used to compile and link (make) programs. Make takes as input a human readable Makefile which describes the interdependencies of the modules in the package, as well as giving exact instructions for making each module. When making a target module, Make recompiles only those modules which have been changed since the target was last made. A simple command like “make all” usually suffices to make all of the modules in a package.

Make is most useful on UNIX systems. Even on non-UNIX systems, however, the makefile for the package is useful documentation, for it describes precisely how to make each module in the package.

Mklib

Mklib is a UNIX dependent utility developed for IRAF. Mklib is analogous to Make, except that Mklib is used to maintain libraries. Mklib checks each module in a library to see if it is up to date, and if not, recompiles the module and installs the new object module in the library. Mklib is used by the IRAF Sysgen utility to automatically update the IRAF system (consisting of four libraries containing several hundred modules).

OS

(1) An acronym for the term “operating system”. (2) The OS interface package, which contains the machine dependent routines required to interface the portable IRAF i/o packages to the local operating system.

OSFN

An acronym for the term “OS dependent file name”.

SPP

The IRAF Subset Preprocessor Language (SPP), implements a subset of the full language scheduled for development in 1984. The SPP language is a general purpose language, patterned after Ratfor and C. The language provides advanced capabilities, modern control constructs, enhanced portability, and support for the IRAF runtime library (CL interface, etc.).

Troff

Troff is the UNIX text formatter. In IRAF documentation, Troff is always used in conjunction with the “ms” macro package.

UNIX

An operating system developed at Bell Labs in the early 1970s by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Though originally developed for the PDP11, UNIX is now available on a wide range of machines, ranging from micros to superminis and mainframes. UNIX is the software development system for the IRAF project.

VFN

An acronym for the term “virtual file name”. A virtual file name is a machine independent filename of the form “ldir$root.extn”.

VMS

The native operating system for Digital Equipment Corporation’s VAX series of supermini computers.

VOPS

The “vector operators” package, a package of SPP callable library routines providing a wide class of vector pseudo-instructions. The VOPS routines are written in the SPP language, but may be optimized in assembler or interfaced directly to an array processor, depending upon the implementation.

band

The Nth band of a three dimensional array or image is denoted by the subscript [∗,∗,N], where ∗ refers to all the pixels in that dimension. A band is a two dimensional array.

binary file

A binary file is an array or sequence of chars, where the term char defines a unit of storage, and implies nothing about the contents of the file. Data is transferred between a binary file and a buffer in the calling program by a simple copy operation, without any form of conversion. Binary files are created, deleted, and accessed via the routines in the FIO interface. Barring device restrictions, binary files may be accessed at random, and extended indefinitely. Almost any device may be accessed as a binary file via FIO.

binary operator

An operator which combines two operands to produce a single result (i.e., the addition operator in “x + y”).

brace

The left and right braces are the characters “{” and “}”. Braces are used in the CL and in the SPP language to group statements to form a compound statement.

bracket

The left and right square brackets are the characters “[” and “]”. Brackets are used in the SPP language to form array subscripts.

byte

The byte is the smallest unit of storage on the host machine. The IRAF system assumes that there are an integral number of bytes in a char and in an address increment (and therefore that the byte is not larger than either). On most modern computers, a byte is 8 bits, and a char is 16 bits (INTEGER∗2). If the address increment is one byte, the machine is said to be byte addressable. Other machines are word addressable, where one word of memory contains two or more bytes. In the SPP language, SZB_CHAR gives the number of bytes per char, and SZB_ADDR gives the number of bytes per address increment.

char

The char is the smallest signed integer which can be directly addressed by programs written in the SPP language. The char is also the unit of storage in IRAF programs: the sizes of objects are given in units of chars, and binary files and memory are addressed in units of chars. Since the SPP language interfaces to the machine via the local Fortran compiler, the Fortran compiler determines the size of a char. On most systems, the datatype char is equivalent to the (nonstandard) Fortran datatype INTEGER∗2.

column

The Nth column vector of a two dimensional array or image is denoted by the subscript [N,∗], where ∗ refers to all the pixels in that dimension. The Nth column of the Mth band of a three dimensional array or image is denoted by [N,∗,M].

compiler

A compiler for a language X is a program which translates a source module written in the language X into an object module. A linker subsequently combines a number of object modules to produce an executable process.

coupling

Coupling measures the strength of relationships between modules. The independence of modules is maximized when coupling in minimized. A change in one module is least likely to require a change in another module when the two modules are minimally coupled.

data structure

A data structure is an aggregate of two or more data elements. Examples include arrays, descriptors, files, records, linked lists, trees, graphs, and so on.

database management

Database management is a branch of computing science concerned with techniques for implementing, maintaining, and accessing databases. Databases may be used to store arbitrarily complex data objects. A database is self describing and self contained. Access to a database typically occurs only through well defined interfaces, which ideally provide a high degree of data independence (the external world knows no more than needed about the contents of the database, or how data is stored in the database).

Applications programs communicate with one another via records passed through the database, as well as save final results in the database. A general purpose query language can be used to inspect and manipulate the contents of a database.

datafile

A datafile is a database storage file. Datafiles are used to store program generated records or descriptors, containing the results of the analysis performed by a program. Datafile records may be the final output of a program, or may be used as input to a program.

field

A field is an element of a structure or record. Each field has a name, a datatype, and a value.

function

A function is a procedure which returns a value. Functions must be declared before they can be used, and functions must only be used in expressions. It is illegal to call a function.

header file

A header file is a file (extension “.h”) containing only defined constants, structure definitions, macro definitions, or comments. Header files are included in other files by referencing them in include statements, and are not directly compiled.

identifier

An identifier is a sequence of characters used to name a procedure, variable, etc. in a compiled language. In the SPP language, an identifier is an upper or lower case letter, followed by any number (including zero) of upper or lower case letters, digits, or instances of the underscore character.

image

An array of arbitrary dimension and datatype, used for bulk data storage. An image is an array of pixels.

imagefile

The form in which images are implemented in the IRAF system. The IRAF currently supports images of up to seven dimensions, in any of eight different datatypes. Only line storage mode is currently available. The “imagefile” structure is actually implemented as two separate files, the image header file and the pixel storage file.

include file

An “include <include_file_name>” statement in the SPP language is replaced during compilation by the contents of the named include file (the contents of the include file are inserted into the input stream).

interface

The interface to a module is defined by the external specifications of the module. The actual interface to a module is everything that is known about the module by other modules in the system. The interface to a subroutine library, for example, is defined by the manual pages, reference manuals, and other formal documentation for the library.

line

The Nth line of a two dimensional array or image is denoted by the subscript [∗,N], where ∗ refers to all the pixels in that dimension. The Nth line of the Mth band of a three dimensional array or image is denoted by [∗,N,M].

list file

A list file is a text file, each line of which is a record containing one or more fields. Each record in the list has the same format, though not all fields need be present (fields can only be omitted from right to left).

macro

A macro, or inline function, is a function with zero or more arguments, which is expanded by text substitution during the preprocessing phase of compilation.

newline

The newline character (’n’) delimits each line of text read by the FIO input procedures. If a text file is read character by character, a single newline character marks the end of each line, and the special character EOF marks the end of the file. Newline is logically equivalent to a carriage return followed by a line feed.

operand

An operand is a data object which is operated upon by an operator, procedure, or task. Operands may be either input or output, or both.

package

A package is a set of modules which operate on a specific abstract datatype. The modules in a package may be either procedures or tasks. Examples of abstract datatypes include the CL, the file, the imagefile, and so on. Some packages are merely collections of modules which are logically related (i.e., the class of system utilities).

parameter

An externaly supplied argument to a module which directly controls the functioning of the module.

pathname

An absolute OS dependent filename specification, i.e, a filename which is not an offset from the current directory.

pixel

The fundamental unit of storage in an image; a picture element. An image is an array of pixels.

pointer

A pointer is a datum which defines the coordinates of an object in some logical coordinate system. To use a pointer, one must know what type of object the pointer points to, and what coordinate system the pointer references.

portable

A program is said to be portable from computer A to computer B if it can be moved from A to B without change. A program is said to be transportable from computer A to computer B if the effort required to move the program from A to B is much less than the effort required to write an equivalent program on machine B from scratch.

preprocessor

A preprocessor is a program which transforms the text of a source file prior to compilation. A preprocessor, unlike a compiler, does not fully define a language. A preprocessor transforms only those constructs which it understands; all other text is passed on to the compiler without change.

procedure

A separately compiled program unit. The procedure is the main construct provided by languages for the abstraction of function. The external characteristics of a procedure are its name, argument list, and optional return value.

process

An executable partition of memory in the host computer. The host OS initiates a process by copying or mapping an executable file into main memory. In a multitasking, multiuser system, a number of processes will in general be simultaneously resident in main memory, and the processor will execute each in turn, performing many context switches each second with the result that all processes appear to be executing simultaneously.

program

A program is a compiled procedure which is called by the CL, via the CL interface. The procedure must be referenced in a task statement before it can be accessed by the CL, and must not have any formal arguments. A program communicates with the CL via CLIO. An arbitrary number of programs may be linked to form a single process.

program interface

The interface between an applications program and the outside world. The program interface is subdivided into a number of packages, each of which has a well defined interface of its own. The specifications of the program interface are summarized in the program interface crib sheet.

record

A record is data structure consisting of an arbitrary set of fields, used to pass information between program modules, or to permanently record the results of an analysis program in a database. Often, records are organized into arrays, where each record contains the results of the analysis of a particular object.

script task

An interpreted program written in the command language. A script task, like a compiled program, may have formal parameters and local variables. A script task may call another task, including another script task, but may not call itself. To the caller, script tasks and compiled programs are equivalent.

specifications

A detailed description of a software system or subsystem, concentrating on the external attributes of the software rather than the on the implementation. Requirements are similar to specifications, but are usually more formal and less detailed. The specifications for a subsystem define the interface to the subsystem, and when written in an informal style may resemble a reference manual.

system interface

The interface between the portable IRAF software and the host operating system. The system interface is a virtual operating system. The system interface routines, maintained in the “OS” package, are in principle the only part of a system that needs to be changed when porting the system to a new computer.

task

A CL callable program unit. CL tasks may be script tasks, external programs, or compiled procedures which are built in to the CL.

task statement

(1) The task statement in the SPP language defines a list of programs to be linked together to form a single process. (2) The CL task statement enters the name of a task in the dictionary, defines the type of task, and in the case of a compiled task, the name of the process in which it resides.

text file

A file which contains only text (character data), and which is maintained in the form expected by the text processing tools of the host OS.

unary operator

An operator which operates on a single operand, i.e., the minus sign in the expression “−x”, or the boolean complement operator in the expression “!x”.

virtual memory

If the address space of a process exceeds the amount of physical memory which the process can directly address, the process is using virtual memory. The virtual address space is organized into a series of fixed size pages. The amount of physical memory available to a process is known as the working set of a process. Pages which are not memory resident, i.e., not in the working set, reside on some form of backing store, usually a disk file. When a page is referenced which is not in the working set, a page fault occurs, causing the page to be read into the working set. If the pattern of memory accesses is such that a page fault occurs on nearly every access, the process is said to be thrashing, and will run exceedingly slowly.

virtual operating system

A package of system calls, providing a set of primitive functions comparable to those provided by an actual operating system, which can be interfaced to a number of actual operating systems. The IRAF virtual operating system provides routines (the so-called z-routines) for file access, process initiation and control, interprocess communication, memory management, magtape i/o, exception handling, logical names, and time and date.

whitespace

A sequence of one or more occurrences of the characters blank or tab.

z-routines

Machine dependent routines, used to interface to the host operating system. The IRAF z-routines are maintained in the package “OS”.