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Using text commands

Text commands are entered by typing them at the VMD prompt in the text console window. This window normally contains the prompt vmd > . When other text (e.g., from a mouse pick) is displayed to the screen, it will scroll the screen up so the prompt is not at the last line of the screen. To make it reappear, press enter. When entering multi-line commands, an alternate prompt appears, ? , and will not disappear until the command is finished. Sometimes it is waiting for a close to a double quote, open brace, or open bracket, while at other times it is waiting for a line that doesn't end in a backslash. Please read a Tcl manual to better understand what constitutes the end of a statement.

Since you may not want to retype all the data in every time, there are two ways to read the data in from a text file. The preferred method is the   play VMD core command. This reads a line from the file, executes it, then updates the screen and checks for any changes in the mouse or forms input. Using this command you can modify the display options while the script is being read. The other option uses the Tcl command   source. This reads the whole file before allowing the mouse and forms to respond to new input.

There are two other ways to play a file. If the file .vmdrc (see section §) exists during startup, it is played. Similarly, at startup the -e command line flag can be used to specify an input file.



Justin Gullingsrud
Tue Apr 6 09:22:39 CDT 1999