Basics

Command line interface (CLI)

milk help is accessible from the command line interface (CLI). Type

$ milk
milk > help

milk's help should get you started.

To exit the CLI, type

milk > exitCLI

Examples below show how to use the milk command line interface (CLI) to perform simple operations.

Writing scripts

You can write scripts to enter milk, execute milk commands from the CLI and exit. Note that milk follows the standard bash comment syntax starting.

Example script file

#!/bin/bash
 
# Enter milk
# Executable name may vary
milk << EOF
 
# enter milk instructions here
creaim im1 512 512
listim
savefits im1 "!im1.fits"
 
# exit command line interface
exitCLI
 
# end of script
EOF

The examples below contain the CLI commands, which can be entered interactively, or included in a script

Example 1: Creating images

# create 2D image, 512 x 512 pixels
# image will be initialized to zero
creaim im1 512 512

# not sure what creaim command does ? check it
cmd? creaim

# create a 3D image
creaim im2 100 100 50

# create a 2D image that is a disk
# for details, type cmd? mkdisk
mkdisk imdisk 512 512 256.0 256.0 100.0

# check what images are in local memory
listim

# save image as FITS file
savefits im1 "im1.fits"

# save disk image to same file name
# need to append "!" to overwrite existing file
savefits imdisk "!im1.fits"

# save compressed image
savefits imdisk "im1.fits.gz"

# check what has been saved (send command to shell)
!ls -lh im1*

Example 2: Loading image, some basic arithmetic

This example assumes example 1 has create the disk image im1.fits

# load image as imdisk0
loadfits im1.fits imdisk0

# create another disk image, larger diameter
mkdisk imdisk1 512 512 256 256 150

# subtract imdisk0 to imdisk1
imring=imdisk1-imdisk0

# check what images are in local memory
listim

# save to disk as imring.fits (default name)
savefits imring