3.5 Saving and restoring inputs

All input and output parameters (“adverbs”) are global throughout AIPS. When an adverb value is specified for, or set by, a task or verb, it remains at that value for any other task or verb that uses an adverb of the same name (until you change it). This global nature of the  adverbs is useful in most cases. It can, however, be inconvenient — especially if you are taken by surprise because you have not reviewed the adverb values before running a task. Before running any task or verb, check your current input adverbs carefully with:

Some tasks have multiple pages of input parameters. QINP allows you to change a parameter on a page, review that page and then go on to the next page without having to view the first pages over again. Some verbs and a few tasks have output adverbs. Unless they are also used on input, they will not appear when you do INP or INPUTS. After running such verbs and tasks, do

To reset all adverbs for a particular task or verb to their initial values, without changing any other adverbs or procedures, enter

You can save all adverbs you have specified for  to disk at any time by typing:

These commands save or restore your entire AIPS “environment”. For this reason, GET must be the only command on the input line; SAVE may appear with other commands, but will be executed before any of the other commands on the line. Thus, the sequence INNAME  ’3C123’  C R INNAME  ’BLLAC’ ; SAVE  BLLAC  C R will save a 3C123 environment, not a BLLAC one. AIPS automatically saves your environment in a disk area called LASTEXIT whenever you use the EXIT, KLEENEX, or RESTART commands. The command GET LASTEXIT is automatically executed whenever you start up the AIPS program again on the same machine. Thus, you retain your own  environment from one use of AIPS to the next. To obtain a null version of the adverb values and of the rest of the  environment, type:

There is also one temporary area for saving your AIPS environment. To save your inputs temporarily, type:

When new verbs and adverbs are created at your site, your old SAVE files will not know about them. Beginning with the 15JAN96 release, you may update the old files with the sequence:

The list of SAVE areas may be reviewed with the verb SGINDEX. A SAVE area may be written as a RUN file (§3.10.2) if you first GET the area and then use SG2RUN.

The input adverb values associated with a task or a verb can be stored by the command:

and retrieved by the command:

TPUT and TGET allow you to avoid, to some extent, the global nature of the adverb values in AIPS. This is sometimes advantageous. Whenever a task (or a verb, for that matter) is executed by the verb GO, TPUT runs automatically. TGET will therefore recover the last set of input adverbs used to execute the task, unless you deliberately overwrite them with a TPUT of your own. Note that  will complain if you try to TGET input adverbs for a task for which no TPUT has previously been run (either manually or automatically). You must “put” before you can “get.” TGINDEX will show you what tasks have been TPUT and when. VPUT, VGET, and VGINDEX allow you to save, recover, and list task-specific adverbs from up to 35 completely user-controlled storage areas. All TGET and VGET files have a new format which includes adverb names. Then, when the adverbs to a task or verb change, TGET and VGET will still work. In 31DEC23, the command TUGET will do a TGET but from a different user number. This may be convenient when the user uses multiple user numbers on his/her computer.

PLGET lets you recover the adverbs used to construct a user-selected plot file. As of 31DEC23, these are known by name. Older plot files depend on the list of adverbs having not changed. Check the INPUTS carefully after a PLGET.

You can change between versions of  software once you are inside AIPS by typing

Alternatively, you may use this command to access a private version of a program in some other area — see §12.2.2. Note that toggling between different versions of  is possible only when the data formats are the same. Unfortunately, recent versions are not fully compatible with previous versions of . (The antenna file format changed in 2009, the internal UV format changed in 2015.) Note also, that you are toggling between different versions of tasks, not the verbs within the AIPS program. That version is selected when you start the program (§2.2.3) and can be changed only by exiting and start anew.