Description of Syntax

The individual commands are treated in alphabetical order in the following section. The novice would be well-served by reading the treatments of the data, model, newpar, and fit commands, in that order, then the other commands as needed. The write-up for each command includes a brief description of the purpose, an outline of the correct syntax, a more detailed discussion of the command assumptions and purpose, and a series of examples. Some commands have one or more subcommands that are similarly described following the command.

In the command description, the syntax uses the following conventions.

<arg> an argument to the command
<arg c>::=<arg a><arg b> defines <arg c>as <arg a> followed by <arg b>
<arg>... a repeated string of arguments of the same type
[<arg>] is an optional argument
<arg a>|<arg b> indicates a choice between an argument of <arg a>or <arg b>

Exceptional responses to the command prompt are :

empty line or line containing only spaces and tab characters nothing performed, prompt repeated
/ any remaining arguments will have the values given on the last invocation of the command
<EOF>(Ctrl-D on Unix) same as quit
/* skip input and return to prompt. Defaults for prompted values will be used.
?, ?command, command ? Print list of commands, or summary help for a single command