These two lines - if included in a S-Lang script which has already loaded the ChIPS module with a

require("chips");

call - will change the x-axis label to "TIME (s)" and the size of the label to 1.5.

We use "() = " to ignore the return value of the call (i.e. whether it succeeded or not).

Defining S-Lang versions of ChIPS commands

The "chips_eval()" function can be used to write your own S-Lang versions of ChIPS commands. The example file listed below ("axis.sl") defines a S-Lang function called "xaxis()" which takes one argument - the label for the X axis. It uses "chips_eval()" to call the ChIPS XLABEL command twice; first to set the label axis and the second the size of the label. The use of "string(label)" means that the function can be called with a numeric argument (since the numeric value will be converted to a string by this function) as well as a string. Before calling XLABEL we turn off the redraw mode - using chips_auto_redraw() - to avoid the plot flashing. The original value for this mode is reset after the chips_eval() calls are made.

  unix% cat axis.sl
  define xaxis(label) {
    variable oldval = chips_auto_redraw(0);
    () = chips_eval( "xlabel '" + string(label) + "'" );
    () = chips_eval( "xlabel size 1.5" );
    () = chips_auto_redraw(oldval);
  }

This can then be used by:

  chips> () = evalfile("axis.sl")
  chips> xaxis("TIME (s)")

The evalfile call can also be included in your .chipsrc resource file to make sure the function is available each time you use ChIPS.