1 Introduction

This document is intended to provide a painless introduction to the art of ADAM programming. A series of programs which are increasingly ambitious in scope are presented and explained.

The next two sections briefly explain the concept of the Starlink standard data structure (the NDF), and how to compile and link ADAM programs. Subsequent sections deal with topics such as accessing NDFs, error and message reporting, data processing, I/O, character handling, graphics, bad pixel handling etc. Later sections illustrate the power of running ADAM programs under the special Interactive Command Language (ICL) rather than the familiar DCL (Digital Command Language). A selection of reference material is presented in the appendices.

All the files, including data files, referred to in this document can be found in the ADAM_EXAMPLES directory on Starlink machines.

Several points about the programs should be made.

• The example programs are each intended to illustrate only one or two aspects of ADAM programming, and are not presented as comprehensive applications. For example, the only program which can handle ‘bad’ pixels is that intended to illustrate that particular topic. Of course, many more of the programs ought to address this particular problem.
• VAX extensions to Fortran are freely used, but the reader is referred to SGP/16 for a discussion of the implications of using these.
• Prologues are omitted in the interests of brevity, but example ADAM prologues are shown in Section 20.
• The link command for each program is contained in ADAM_EXAMPLES:LINK.COMMANDS. However, the linking procedures described in this document are all liable to change in the near future. Both this document and the LINK.COMMANDS file will be updated as changes occur.

No previous experience of ADAM is assumed.

The reader is referred to SG/4 for an overview of ADAM and the various application packages which are available within it.