In order to get properly initialised, MIDAS needs the following information
Two other variables are very important to MIDAS - MIDVERS, which holds the MIDAS version you use at your site, and MIDASHOME, the root directory for the MIDAS system code. These variables should have been set up correctly by your system manager when MIDAS was installed.
To start MIDAS, type INMIDAS on a VMS system or inmidas
on a Unix system.
This will initialise the MIDAS monitor as follows:
On startup the current MIDAS version and the computer and operating system you
are using are displayed together with a copyright notice.
Then the prompt string
Midas 001>
appears on the terminal screen and
you are ready to execute any of the available MIDAS commands.
The internal MIDAS files all reside in the MIDAS working directory
( MID_WORK),
the data files are taken from the current working directory unless the
complete file specification is given in the data file name.
Since MIDAS executes its applications in a child process (subprocess
for VMS) which leaves no traces after termination, you cannot simply
use the host command SET DEF (VMS) or cd (Unix) to change
the working directory once you are in a MIDAS session.
Instead, use the MIDAS command change/direc for that purpose.
MIDAS is a case insensitive system. That means, you can type your input
with upper or lower case characters. There are, however, some
pitfalls with respect to the data files that reside in the local file
system. In VMS, the system automatically translates all file names
to upper case, so LOLA.BDF and lola.bdf specify exactly the
same file. In Unix, file names may be specified using lower and upper case, so
LOLA.BDF and lola.bdf are two different files.
The convention in MIDAS is to always use lower case file names (e.g. in
tutorial procedures) to guarantee portability between VMS and Unix.
Also, all default file types are specified in lower case,
e.g. .bdf and .tbl for images and tables.
Note All MIDAS commands in the following sections are printed with capital letters. This is just for reasons of readability, i.e., to highlight them. The commands could all be typed in lower case as well.