RE: Reduction pipeline

[Doug Welch <welch@physics.mcmaster.ca>]

Rob asked if IRAF can be called from other programs and scripts -
which is a good question. The answer is yes and I have done this,
but it is fair to say that this isn't the usage with which many folks
"at astronomical institutions" would be familiar. Basically, you
use the executables which are found in the bin.<arch> directories.
There is an IRAF Newsletter article somewhere which describes this 
in more detail. (The IRAF site is http://iraf.noao.edu, in case
anyone didn't know that.)

As far as I know, there is no difficulty "piping" the results
of one routine to another.

Cheers,
Doug