PSRCHIVE user documentation: pam

1.0 Purpose

The Pulsar Archive Manipulator, pam, is designed to do the dirty work of messing around with archives on disk, processing them, compressing them, tweaking them... As such it is one of the most dangerous of the PSRCHIVE applications. Like vap and pav it has a bewildering array of command line options, a summary of which can be printed using the faithful "-h". Of particular note are the options related to file output. pam has a sort of in-built safety catch in that it does nothing to the data files unless you explicitly tell it to do so. Processing options on their own result in no change to the archive on disk, they are performed on the file once it has been read into memory. In order to make the change permanent, you have to write out this new copy, either in place of the old file or with a different name or in a new location with the same or different name, etc. The essential options involved are: 
"-m"  Modify (or mangle, depending on your perspective) the original file
      where it stands... no going back!

"-e"  Write out modified copies, changing the file extension to preserve
      the originals.

"-u"  Write out new archives with (by default) the same name, but in
      the given location (can be combined with "-e").

2.0 Usage

pam is very simple to use, all commands are of the form 
pam options filenames
where the options can be anything from a large list of available parameters. For a full list of options, use: 
pam -h
Multiple filenames can be specified on the command line either individually or using wildcard characters. Don't forget to specify what you want done with the data, using one of the three output options listed above. If you fail to do so, you will be given a friendly reminder that you have just wasted a whole bunch of CPU cycles (but possibly spared your hair and / or sanity for a few more days).

3.0 Algorithms

pam has a job lot of functionality, built around the core of the PSRCHIVE base classes and their methods. It'll even let you override header parameters in some cases, if you need to change the recorded feed basis in an archive for example.

4.0 Testing and examples

Pretty straight forward really. The following command will reduce each ".ar" file to a single profile, saving a lot of disk space. 
pam -m -FTp *.ar
Or, if you just want to make timing profiles and preserve the raw data, you could use: 
pam -e tt -FTp *.ar
then run pat on the resulting ".tt" files.

5.0 Known bugs and features that require implementation

  • None at this time.