  We present flame, a pipeline for reducing spectroscopic observations obtained
with multi-slit near-infrared and optical instruments. Because of its flexible
design, flame can be easily applied to data obtained with a wide variety of
spectrographs. The flexibility is due to a modular architecture, which allows
changes and customizations to the pipeline, and relegates the
instrument-specific parts to a single module. At the core of the data reduction
is the transformation from observed pixel coordinates (x, y) to rectified
coordinates (lambda, gamma). This transformation consists in the polynomial
functions lambda(x,y) and gamma(x,y) that are derived from arc or sky emission
lines and slit edge tracing, respectively. The use of 2D transformations allows
one to wavelength calibrate and rectify the data using just one interpolation
step. Furthermore, the gamma(x,y) transformation includes also the spatial
misalignment between frames, which can be measured from a reference star
observed simultaneously with the science targets. The misalignment can then be
fully corrected during the rectification, without having to further resample
the data. Sky subtraction can be performed via nodding and/or modeling of the
sky spectrum; the combination of the two methods typically yields the best
results. We illustrate the pipeline by showing examples of data reduction for a
near-infrared instrument (LUCI at the Large Binocular Telescope) and an optical
one (LRIS at the Keck telescope).
