3 Hints and tips

This section lists a handful of useful hints and tips for running Picard.

• Make sure the .sdf extension is included in the filename if passing in a single file.
• A single recipe parameter file can be used for multiple recipes:
    [RECIPE1]
    PARAM1 = VALUE1
    PARAM2 = VALUE2
    
    [RECIPE2]
    PARAM_A = VALUE_A
    PARAM_B = VALUE_B
• If the environment variable ORAC_DATA_OUT is defined, any files created by Picard will be written in that location. Check there if new files are expected but do not appear in the current directory.
• The list of files can be the output from cat: e.g. 
    % picard -log s RECIPE_NAME ‘cat filestoprocess.lis‘

  Remember to include the .sdf for each file in the list in the file filestoprocess.lis.

• All data should be from the same instrument. For SCUBA-2 users, this means data from a single wavelength.
• By default Picard does not know how to display the files produced as part of processing, especially if relying on instrument-specific features. If display is required, make a copy of the file disp.dat located in $ORAC_CAL_ROOT/inst_name where inst_name is the (lower-case) name of the instrument from which the data originated (e.g. scuba2).
• Be as specific as possible when providing the list of input files to avoid the possibility of processing output files from Picard in subsequent runs: running with *.sdf is generally a bad idea. Creating a text file containg the relevant filenames is best (see above).