【正文】 el, and a storing unitsuch as a liquid crystal display or a CRT display, an input unit2, a display unit andFIG. 9 is a flow chart showing medicine container attaching/detaching processes in accordance with a second embodiment.DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTSFIG. 1 shows a medicine packing apparatus in accordance with the first embodiment of the present invention. This medicine packing apparatus is provided with a medicine supplying unitFIG. 7 shows a screen of “medicine container attaching/detaching” process carried out based upon prescription data。FIG. 5 shows a screen of “medicine container attaching/detaching” process。FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing processes of a medicine packing operation。 and a control unit for allowing the storage unit to store the corresponding relationship between the kind of a medicine housed in the medicine container and the shelf number upon attaching the medicine container to the shelf sections, and for erasing the corresponding relationship from the storage unit upon detaching the medicine container from the shelf.With this arrangement, by only attaching and detaching medicine containers to and from the respective shelf sections, the shelf numbers and the corresponding kinds of medicines are shown in parallel with each other. Therefore, it bees possible to carry out the operations of attaching, detaching and exchanging medicine containers during a medicine packing operation. For this reason, even when the kinds of medicines bee more than the number of the shelf sections, it is possible to deal with such cases by exchanging the medicine containers during a packing process.Moreover, when a display unit which displays the corresponding relationship between the shelf number of the shelf section to which the medicine container is attached and the medicine placed therein or the corresponding relationship between the shelf number of the shelf section from which the medicine container is detached and the medicine detached therefrom, is added to this apparatus, it bees possible to confirm the operations of attaching and detaching the medicine containers to and from the respective shelf section, and this arrangement makes it possible to prevent the operator from being confused even when the number of attaching and detaching operations increases.In this arrangement, when the display unit is allowed to display shelf numbers of the shelf sections to which medicine containers containing medicines included in prescription data are attached and shelf numbers of the shelf sections to which the other medicine containers that contain no medicines included in the prescription data are attached, shelf sections in which medicine containers are easily exchangeable are readily specified so that it bees possible to improve the operability.In the case when a medicine container detecting unit, which detects the presence or absence of a medicine container on the shelf section, is further added to this arrangement, based upon a detection signal from the medicine container detecting unit, the control unit allows the display unit to display the shelf number of the shelf section to which the medicine container is attached or the shelf number of the shelf section from which the medicine container is detached. Thus, it bees possible to automatically detect the attaching and detaching operations of the medicine containers, and consequently to improve the operability while preventing erroneous attaching operations.In the case when a medicine identifying information reading unit, which reads medicine identifying information of a medicine container on a shelf section, is further added to this arrangement, based upon a detection signal from the medicine identifying information reading unit, the control unit allows the display unit to display the medicine and the shelf number of the corresponding shelf secti