noao.imred.specred.skysub “combine” parameter bug

JCab wrote on Aug 08, 2008

The help for the skysub command claims you can use combine=sum as a parameter, when attempts to do so are blocked and the user is told only "average" and "median" are acceptable. Now I will admit, it makes sense that a sky spectrum be an average or a median, but I wanted to see the sum for reasons that are goofy enough not to delve into here.

So this leads to two questions:
1) Who do I contact to get this documentation error fixed for skysub in the future?

2) Since I wanted to get subs working in skysub, I poked around the source code for skysub.cl and found that lines 19-20 the skysub.cl script do indeed state:

string	combine = "average"	{prompt="Combining option",
				 enum="average|median"}

Now, since skysub just calls scombine, for which sum is a valid option, I tried changing these to lines to read

string	combine = "average"	{prompt="Combining option",
				 enum="average|median|sum"}

and even after exiting IRAF and restarting and doing a "unlearn skysub" to clear out my parameter file, I still can't define combine=sum.

Any ideas why? When writing my own scripts, exiting ecl and restarting usually forced it to load the new script.

Juan

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Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Aug 08, 2008

The SKYSUB task also has a .par file even though it is a script. You'll find a 'skysub.par' in the same directory as the 'skysub.cl' and will need to add the sum option to that as well. We can add this option for the next release.

-Mike

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JCab wrote on Aug 08, 2008

fitz

The SKYSUB task also has a .par file even though it is a script. You'll find a 'skysub.par' in the same directory as the 'skysub.cl' and will need to add the sum option to that as well. We can add this option for the next release.

Thanks, that explains it.

Juan

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Francisco Valdes wrote on Aug 08, 2008

Hi,

I can't recall why but it is the case that there is a skysub.par file which has precedence over the implied parameter set in the script. I have added "sum" as one of the enumerated choices for the "combine" parameter. I leave it to you see if finally scombine does the right thing for you.

Note that a workaround would be to change the enumerated values interactively (which also means it could be done in loginuser.cl). However, any unlearn would erase this.

skysub.combine.p_min="average|median|sum"

The fact that it is the p_min field is a consequence of dual use for this field.

Yours,
Frank Valdes

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Last post on Aug 08, 2008