commode

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commode

Purpose

General purpose command parser for user interface command functions.

Syntax

commmode('CommandFcn','ChainOfCommands')

Description

Most user interfaces operations in the Structural Dynamics Toolbox are grouped in UI command functions (iicom, idcom, fecom, femesh, etc.). The desired commands and possible options are passed to the command functions as text commands.

Conventions used in the helps to specify string commands used by user interface functions are

italic	standard names for numerical or string values
()	same as italic but used for the on-line rather than HTML help
[c1,c2]	alternatives for a command (separated by commas)

Thus ch[,c] [i,+,-,+i,-i] means that ch 14, chc 12:14, chc+, ch-2 are all valid commands. Commands are text strings so that you can use fecom ch[1 4] or fecom('ch 1 4') but not fecom ch 1 4 where ch, 1 and 4 are interpreted by MATLAB as 3 separate strings.

When building complex commands you may need to compute the value used for variable. Some commands actually let you specify an additional numeric argument (feplot('textnode',[1 2 3]) and feplot('textnode 1 2 3') are the same) but in other cases you will have to build the string yourself using calls of the form feplot(['textnode' sprintf(' %i',[1 2 3])])

The UI command functions only accept one command at a time, so that commode was introduced to allow

command mode: replace the MATLAB prompt >> by a CommandFcn> which directly sends commands to the command function(s).
command chaining: several commands separated by semi-columns ;. The parsing is then done by commode.
scripting: execute all commands in a file.

Most command functions send a command starting by a ';' to commode for parsing. Thus commode ('iicom','cax1;abs') is the same as iicom (';cax1;abs')

The following commands are directly interpreted by commode (and not sent to the command functions)

q,quit	exits the command mode provided by commode but not MATLAB
script FName	reads the file FName line by line and executes the lines as command strings

The following syntax rules are common to commode and MATLAB

%comment	all characters after a % and before the next line are ignored
[]	brackets can be used to build matrices
;	separate commands (unless within brackets to build a matrix)