EZL Documentation Home

Command Window

The Command Window is used to provide feedback (warnings, errors, or information) from EZL to you and to issue commands from you to EZL. Commands exist to provide quick access to the functions within EZL. Typing commands is often easier and faster than finding them in the Toolsets pane or Toolbar. Furthermore, commands can be stored in text files and saved with .ezs extensions to create EZL scripts.

EZL's Command Window displaying help for the marker command.

Verbose Mode

To enable verbose messaging, type "verbose" and press enter. The "verbose" command toggles verbose mode on and off, or it can be explicitly enabled or disabled via commands "verbose on" and "verbose off", respectively.

Available Commands

At the current software version (v2.1.2) the following commands are available through the Command Window or EZScripts.

/1 Add Addx Barfloor Cache Cacher
Cd Clear Closeall Closetab Crop Diff
Div Divx Dmarker Exit Expr Ezl
Footnote Function Grid Help History Hmarker
Legend Legendpos Line Linewidth Ls Mean
Meanaggr Mul Mulx Newtab Norm Pntrad
Pnts Poly Pwd Remove Rescale Rotl
Rotr Sink Smooth Sort Spanx Spany
Stats Sub Subx Tablabel Title Undo
Unwrap Usingtab Verbose Version Vmarker Xlbl
Ylbl \1

1While the first and last items, "/" and "\", are not commands (they are used for EZL text formatting), they are provided here as they do have in-program help contexts.

Command Help

EZL provides in-program help on its commands. Typing "help" in the Command Window will return a list of available commands. For help on a specific command, type "help [command]", where [command] is replaced with the command of interest.

Example:

Command Window
-----------------------------
> help title
> Format  : Title [label]
  Purpose : Sets the title for the plot currently in view. Calling title with no label
            sets an empty title (ie. removes the title).
  Example : "title Ramsey Fringes"
  Notes   : Labels can be multi-line by inserting \n within the label to indicate a line break.
            EZL includes a set of special characters available for use in labels.
            Type "help /" for a display of the character set.
>

The Help system uses the following conventions:

Typing "help help" in the Command Window will elaborate on the Help system's syntax convention discussed above.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The Command Window has the following keyboard shortcuts:

Final Notes

Most of our users will tell you that it is well worth your time to get comfortable with the command window. We think you will find that by doing so, your productivity will dramatically improve. As a simple example, adding several markers to a plot is far quicker using the "marker" command, than by using the "Marker: Add Vertical" toolset button.

In other words, issuing "marker 5 10 15 20 25" is a lot more efficient than adding five markers one at a time via the toolset panel.

Need a command?

If you would like a command added to EZL let us know! We'd be happy to add it.