Physics Analysis Workstation


The Physics Analysis Workstation is an interactive, scriptable computer software tool for data analysis and graphical presentation in High Energy Physics.
The development of this software tool started at CERN in 1986, it was optimized for the processing of very large amounts of data. It was based on and intended for inter-operation with components of CERNLIB, an extensive collection of Fortran libraries.
PAW had been a standard tool in high energy physics for decades, yet was essentially unmaintained. Despite continuing popularity as of 2008, it has been losing ground to the C++-based ROOT package. Conversion tutorials exist. In 2014, development and support were stopped.

Sample script

PAW uses its own scripting language. Here is sample code, which can be used to plot data gathered in files.

  •  read data
vector/read X,Y input_file.dat
  •  eps plot
fort/file 55 gg_ggg_dsig_dphid_179181.eps
meta 55 -113
opt linx | linear scale
opt logy | logarithmic scale
  •  here goes plot
set plci 1 | line color
set lwid 2 | line width
set dmod 1 | line type 
graph 32 X Y AL | 32 stands for input data lines in input file
  •  plot title and comments
set txci 1
atitle ' ' 'd/d! '
set txci 1
text 180.0 2e1 '=179...181 deg' 0.12
close 55