The Command Line

The maximum length of the command line is 320 characters. The command line can be continued over several input lines. If SPECTRA finds a hyphen ("-") or a "\" as the last character of an input line, it removes it and accepts additional text for the command string. Command lines that are supplied to the SPECTRA> item in menus may not be continued.

An input line may consist of several commands which have to be separated by a special character. By default the semicolon ";" is used as a separator, but it can be set to any other character (set separator ...).

Sometimes the separator has to be invisible to the command interpreter, like in the following case:

SPECTRA> audi = "auto;display"

If the quotation marks were omitted in the above command line, it would result in a symbol assignment audi = auto followed by a display command.

The command line can be edited with a few emacs-like commands:

 INSERT
toggle insert/overstrike mode

 ctrl-b/ctrl-f
move cursor backward/forward

 ctrl-d
delete the next character

 ctrl-a/ctrl-e
goto the begin/end of the line

 ctrl-k
delete the rest of the line

 ctrl-n/ctrl-p
next/previous command

 TAB
complete file names

SPECTRA maintains a command line history. The last 100 commands are automatically restored at the beginning of a new session. The name of the history file is: $HOME/.gra_history.