Swat Introduction: 4 On-line Help

GEOS SDK TechDocs

3 Address Expressions

5 Essential Commands

Swat provides on-line help, both for looking up Swat topics and GEOS reference material.

To get help on a specific Swat command, you simply type the following, where the command is the argument.

[hello3:0] 7 => help <cmd>

To use Swat's interactive, menu-based help system, simply type the following:

[hello3:0] 8 => help

The menu-based system provides a tree of help topics which are organized into subjects. If you are looking for Swat commands having to do with a subject not covered in the help tree, you might try using the apropos command.

To get information about a GEOS topic, use the doc functions.

apropos

apropos [<string>]

The apropos command searches the list of commands and command help for all entries containing <string>. It lists each command and its synopsis. The string may actually be a partial word.

help

help [<command>]

There are two different ways to use the help command. The first is to enter the interactive help mode using the help command with no arguments, and the second is to use the help command with a particular command as an argument.

Interactive help mode

The interactive help mode consists of a tree of commands and topics identified by different numbers. If one of the numbers is typed, information about that particular topic or command is displayed. Some of the topics have their own subtrees (indicated by the ellipses following the topic heading) which follow the same numbering format. The interactive help mode is used when looking for a certain style of command but the name of the command is not known (see The Help Tree ).

The Help Tree

(geos:0) 198 => help

top-most level of the help tree:
 
 0 FINISH 			6 memory... 			12 step...
 1 advanced... 			7 object... 			13 support...
 2 breakpoint... 			8 print... 			14 swat_navigation...
 3 crash... 			9 running... 			15 window...
 4 file... 			10 source...
 5 heap... 			11 stack...

Type "help" for help, "menu" to redisplay the menu, "0" to exit.
Type a topic (or its number) to display it.
help:top>

help < command >

When help is typed with another command as an argument, information about that command is displayed (the same information as in the interactive help mode). This command is frequently used in order to get fast help on a particular command. (See The help Command .)

The help Command

(geos:0) 200 => help help
Help for help:
Functions for manipulating/accessing the help tree
==============================================================================
This is the user-level access to the on-line help facilities for Swat. If
given a topic (e.g. "brk") as its argument, it will print all help strings
defined for the given topic (there could be more than one if the same name is
used for both a variable and a procedure, for instance). If invoked without
arguments, it will enter a browsing mode, allowing the user to work his/her
way up and down the documentation tree
==============================================================================
(geos:0) 201 =>

GEOS SDK TechDocs

3 Address Expressions

5 Essential Commands