PISA is available as part of the Starlink Software Collection and can be used from ICL and the C-shell. The package is always initialised by the command
after performing the required Starlink initialisations. Note that in this document the # sign is used as a generic prompt and should not be typed.
When using PISA from the C-shell care needs to be taken with special characters, some of which may be required by the parameter system. In these cases (such as quoted strings "", and vector braces []) the characters must be protected from interpretation by the use of the escape character \ or by use of single quotes.
On-line help is available using the
command from the C-shell. From ICL use the command
Help can also be obtained at any prompt by specifying ? or ??. Program execution can be halted at a prompt by returning the abort command (!!).
As an alternative to these approaches this document can be viewed on-line using a hypertext browser using the command: