Getting Started

To start the MIDAS system:

• Type inmidas on a UNIX (Linux) system (INMIDAS on a VMS system) This will setup the MIDAS environment and the terminal should respond with the Midas prompt:

  Midas 001>

• The available commands can be listed out by typing HELP. This only gives you the names of the commands presently available in the system. A summary and a subject grouped listing of the commands you will find in Appendix A. A command can have several qualifiers which will change the mode of execution of the command e.g STATISTICS has qualifiers IMAGE, TABLE and POISSON. It is possible, typing HELP command, to get a display of all the command/qualifier combinations available for the given command. Detailed information about a specific command/qualifier combination can be obtained by typing HELP command/qualifier. It is however much more convenient to start up the GUI for the Midas help facility with the command CREATE/GUI HELP and obtain help via pointing and clicking with the mouse.
• In some installations a number of tutorial commands are available. (see Table 2.1) They provide an illustration of different parts of the system.

Note

MIDAS is case insensitive, i.e. it does not matter if you enter MIDAS commands in upper or lower case characters. It's just for readability that we write all MIDAS commands in this chapter in upper case.