sherpacl

Description

The SherpaCL application can be started using the "sherpacl" command, which will display a banner and then leave you at the prompt, at which you can enter commands:

unix% sherpacl

-------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to SherpaCL: CXC's Modeling and Fitting Program
-------------------------------------------------------
Version: 0.1 - October 2009

Type AHELP for help.
Type SYNTAX command for the syntax of the command.
Type EXIT, QUIT, or BYE to leave the program.

 Solar Abundance Vector set to angr:  Anders E. & Grevesse N. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 53, 197 (1989)
 Cross Section Table set to bcmc:  Balucinska-Church and McCammon, 1998

sherpacl>

The application can be exited by using one of the following (noting that commands are case insensitive):

• BYE
• EXIT
• QUIT
• control-d (this is new to SherpaCL)

History file

Commands from previous runs of SherpaCL are stored in a history file - $HOME/.sherpacl-hist - which is loaded into SherpaCL at start up. This history can be accessed using the standard history mechanism: up arrow to scan through previous lines and control-r to start a search of the history. There is no logging to the $HOME/.sherpa-session-PID files that occured in CIAO 3.4.

Filename completion

There is basic support for filename completion; it should be improved over that in CIAO 3.4. There is currently no support for command completion.

Running scripts

A file of Sherpa and ChIPS commands can be run either by listing it after the SherpaCL command name, or via the USE command at the prompt. So, to execute the commands in sherpa.shp (the suffix need not be .shp) you can use either of the following:

unix% sherpacl sherpa.shp
sherpacl> USE sherpa.shp

See the 'Command-line flags' and 'Batch mode' sections below for more information on controlling the behavior of SherpaCL when processing the files.

Note that you can now provide multiple command files on the command line; in CIAO 3.4 you could only process one file.

Command-line flags

A list of command-line flags supported by SherpaCL can be found by using the --help switch:

unix% sherpacl --help
Usage: sherpacl [options] [file1 .. fileN]

 An interactive interface that allows users to use CIAO 3.4 syntax for Sherpa
and ChIPS commands in CIAO 4.  The language that can be used is currently
somewhat limited.  If the file ~/.sherpacl.rc exists then it will be processed
before any other file or user input.

Options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -l LANG, --lang=LANG  What language to use: python or slang [default:
                        python]
  -b, --batch           Run in batch mode? [default: False]
  -d, --debug           Run in debug mode? [default: False]
  -c, --convert         Should the converted command be displayed? [default:
                        False]

--lang and --convert

The sherpacl application can act as a "convertor", displaying the CIAO 4 version of the command a user has just entered. This can be turned on or off from within the application using the CONVERT command, but it can also be set by using the --convert command-line flag. The language to convert to (S-Lang or Python) is controlled by the --lang flag.

--batch

If used, SherpaCL will process any command-line files and then exit the application. Without this flag the application will leave you at the interactive prompt after processing the files. Using the --batch flag will also stop the Sherpa banner from being displayed, and run ChIPS plots with the "REDRAW" setting turned off (so no on-screen output will be created).

Resource files and customizing SherpaCL

The contents of $HOME/.sherpacl-state-rc and $HOME/.sherpacl.rc will be processed, in this order, before any command-line files or the interactive prompt is displayed. The .sherpacl-state-rc file can be created by the save_state() command (see 'AHELP SAVE_STATE' from within SherpaCL), and the .sherpacl.rc file can consist of anything that can be entered at the SherpaCL prompt: Sherpa or ChIPS commands and single-line S-Lang statements. A message will be displayed to the screen when the resource file is processed. So, with

unix% cat ~/.sherpacl.rc
# Aliases
alias lpfd n= : lp fit $n delch $n
alias lpfr n=1 : lp fit $n resid $n

# Configure Sherpa
set_log;
unix% sherpacl
...
 Cross Section Table set to bcmc:  Balucinska-Church and McCammon, 1998

==> Processing contents of /home/sherpa/.sherpacl.rc
Adding alias for lpfd
Adding alias for lpfr
sherpacl>

where ALIAS is a new command that creates aliases for command commands (see 'AHELP ALIAS' frm within SherpaCL for more information).

Unlike CIAO 3.4, only $HOME is searched for these files; the environment variables $SHERPARC and $SHERPA_STATE_RC, and the current working directory are not used to locate these resource files.

No ChIPS resource file

There is no atempt to load a ChIPS resource file in this version of SherpaCL.