Commands: Overview

Introduction

The following chapters give a detailed explanation of all EDA commands, grouped together according to their functions and syntax concepts.

This chapter gives some notational conventions and describes the command line editor, as well as the global switches.

The next chapters are structured as follows: (Each chapter starts with a short introduction and overview).

  1.  Chap. 6  Analysis commands I: Exploration
  2.        7  Analysis commands II: Multidimensional analyses
  3.        8  Analysis commands III: Cluster analysis
  4.        9  Print file and related commands
  5.       10  Case selection commands
  6.       11  Documents and related commands
  7.       12  General utility (default values, operating modes,
               program information commands)
  8.       14  Console data entry
  9.       15  File input output commands
 10.       16  Work area management and transformations
 11.       17  Transformations (expression syntax)
 12.       18  Macro programming
 14.       19  TED the EDA text editor

Syntactical notation

The following sections describe syntax and use of all the EDA commands. Several syntactic conventions are used:

     [],{}      these fields are optional
     |   |      select exactly one option
     <>         designates syntactical constructs
                defined elsewhere (usually below)

Items enclosed in [] or {} within a pair of || denote default values for that command.

This chapter is divided into two sections : (1) quick overview of all available commands and (2) a full description of all commands. The applications manual AM (Horber 1981) describes the main features of this program by "task" or "structure" and not by "command" as does this reference manual.

On-line assistance

On line assistance is available within EDA. The HELP command displays general information on commands, syntactical conventions and the like. The syntax of any command is displayed by entering the command preceded by a ? mark, e.g. ?PLOT displays the syntax of the PLOT command. The last command is set to PLOT (? removed). The TED and EDITor modules have their own HELP commands.

The HELP facility is not a tutorial; you should be familiar with the terms and abbreviations used in these introductory chapters, as well as with syntactical constructs in order to understand the texts displayed.

Command line editor (CLED)

NOTE: This facility may not be interesting if your operating system provides some means of command line correction and command history.

The command line editor is used to correct(edit) a command line. A correction command takes the form of a single letter command, preceded by a ':' sign in column 1 of a command line.

CLED is available within the toolbox, TED and EDIT with the same syntax. (Some commands have also an EDIT option; then the same editing commands can be used to modify for instance a command abbrevation).

A certain number (default 10) of previous commands are remembered; therefore it is possible to recall and/or correct the last ten commands.

A single letter command may be preceded by a number, which refers to a previous command. Normally CLED operates on the current (i.e. the command you have performed previously) command or from the current command on backwards or forward). When indicating a number any of the previously remembered command may be made into the current command, e.g. :E edits the current command, whereas :8E edits command number 8 (this command also becomes the current command; a :X re-executes the current command, :6X re-executes command line number 8.

Command line numbers are shown by the :L command and are counted backwards (1) is the current line and is shown first with :L, (2) is the second and so on, up to the limit of commands remembered. The following commands are available (preceded by ':'):

-----------------------------------------------------------
| command |     function                           | note |
-----------------------------------------------------------
| (blank) |  displays last (current) command line  |  1   |
| L       |  displays the last ten command lines   |  2   |
| -       |  the command preceding last command    |  3   |
|         |  becomes the current command           |      |
| X       |  executes the current command          |      |
| A<str>  |  appends <str> to the current command  |      |
| E       |  inline correction of current command  |  4   |
-----------------------------------------------------------

Notes

(1) The current command is the last command executed; a simple : displays this last command line.
(2) The last ten commands are remembered by the program and are available to the user. The :L command lists all ten commands in reverse order: first the current (last) command, then the second last and so forth.
(3) Through the :- command the second last command becomes the last (current) command. Successive :- will go back one command each time. When doing that the (old) current command will be added at the end of the list, i.e. with ten :- commands you will be back where you started from (rotation).
(4) The :E command displays the current command and waits then for a correction image. A correction image is a string starting with one out of four editing characters, namely D (delete), O (for overlay) I (insert) or R (replace) and ends with the @ symbol, or the end of the command line. This particular mode is terminated if a blank line is entered. If you wish to escape this mode, without :X'ing terminate with the // sign (as first character).

  Consider the following example:

   >:E                            inline editing
    :PLOT 1 2 CASID X=10 Y=20
   >                 R20@         correction image
    PLOT 1 2 CASID X=20 Y=20      corrected command
   >:E
    :PLOT 1 2 CASID X=20 Y=20
                  I NOOUTLIER@    correction image
   PLOT 1 2 CASID NOOUTLIER X=20 Y=20
   >:X

A line starting with the > (prompt) symbol is a line entered by the user, other lines are system response. In the example the :E invokes the editing facility, it displays the current command and waits for a correction image, which here means: replace the 10 by 20 (the @ chars signals the end of the correction image. Then the editor is again invoked to insert the word NOOUTLIER and the finally :X asks for execution of that command line.

Global options (switches)

A global option may be specified on any command line (including TED, EDIT and TOOL). Two options are available:

   /D    Do not display
   /P    Do not print
   /S    Stack result variable

These options when present are part of the option field of a command line. Global options are keyword options starting with the / symbol.

/D suppresses the display of the output of the current command, i.e. no output to the screen is produced. This is useful, whenever you wish to have the result only in the print file or you do not wish to see the result, as it is often the case when you are executing a macro.

/P inhibits recording of the results on the print file. If no print file is open, this option has no effect (no message is given).

/S is used to stack result variables. This is an advanced feature used in general with macros. This feature is activated by the STACK command. See there for more details.

Note that the /P, /D and /S global options are strictly limited to the current command; its effect is limited to the output produced by the command itself. This holds even within sub-commands or with the auto-repeat feature. In these cases if you desire to inhibit e.g. screen output, you will have to re-specify the /D option.

Copying variables

The syntax charts often show options used to copy some result into a variable in the WA. These options usually appear as something like RESULT{=target.var#}, i.e. as two different ways of specifying the option.

The form RESULT=var# means that the result is to be copied into variable number var#, i.e. as specific location in the WA.

The second form, i.e. just RESULT, is usually more convenient: it just looks for a free location in the WA and stores the result there. The exact location is displayed (unless the SET MESSAGE switch has been set to inhibit this kind of messages) and is also stored as one of the result variables (see the specific commands for the number of the result variables).