VMS/IRAF Installation and Site Manager's Guide

VMS/IRAF Installation and Site Manager's Guide

4. Configuring the IRAF Environment

Since IRAF is a machine and operating system independent, distributed system capable of executing on a heterogeneous network, it has its own environment facility separate from that of the host system. Host system environment variables may be accessed as if they are part of the IRAF environment (which is sometimes useful but which can also be dangerous), but if the same variable is defined in the IRAF environment it is the IRAF variable which will be used. The IRAF environment definitions, as defined at CL startup time, are defined in a number of files in the [IRAF.VMS.HLIB] directory. Chief among these is the system wide zzsetenv.def file. Additional user modifiable definitions may be given in the user's login.cl file.