Interpreting CASA output

Sometimes, the output from CASA can be a bit cryptic. On this page, we detail some of the outputs from common tasks that might not be so intuitive. As with AIPS and other packages, some cryptic messages end up being benign messages for debugging purposes, while others are more significant. Of course, any feedback which crashes your script, or CASA itself, without any other discernable cause, is likely worth a visit to the helpdesk.

How much progress have you really made?

For tasks that take significant time, you will often see a progress meter run across the screen from left to right:

0%....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100%

In CASA, you will sometimes experience more than one such row, and potentially several for time- and labor-intensive tasks like clean. These are related to the subtasks which are being run. Short answer: seeing your first '100%' doesn't mean you're done. Getting the CASA prompt back does.

Don't be afraid of the QProcess

Sometimes you might see the following message:

QProcess: Destroyed while process is still running.

This can even happen when starting CASA initially, and is generally not reproducible. While this message sounds rather dire, it is a benign debugger message which you can safely ignore--it is just a result of lots of checks being put into place to check the status of the full range of processes that must run.