Shell Commands

Owned by Erlend Kvinnesland
Last updated: Dec 09, 2013

Introduction

Geocap offers a high-level technical command language, called shell commands, that lets you perform numeric computations, data analysis, data visualization and algorithm development. The two main reasons for using shell commands are:

  1. The user can operate directly on dataset rather than having to open up advanced menus. This increases simplicity, and also makes data operations quicker to carry out.
  2. The user can group shell commands and parameters into scripts in order to achieve any functionality needed.

It is not necessary to know about the command language to operate Geocap, but for users who are familiar with it, it provides great flexibility and increases efficiency in their work with Geocap.

The description of every shell command, with examples on how to use them, can be found in the Reference Manual



In this section:

Shell

The easiest way to access the command language is from the shell, which provides a command-line interface where the shell commands can be executed on datasets in the workspace. The shell can be found under the Shell and Workspace tab in the Toolbox. Read more about commands in Programming in Geocap and the Reference Manual.


The shell and workspace interface

Workspace

The workspace runs in the Geocap memory and consists of datasets (grids, points, lines and numbers) built up during a session of using the Geocap shell. Datasets are moved into the workspace by simply copying them from the project and pasting them into the workspace. You can also create datasets directly in the shell. Since the workspace runs in the Geocap memory it is cleared when exiting the program. Thus, it is important to move the datasets back to the project if you want to keep them. This is also done by copy and paste.

Scripts

Understanding the most basic shell commands and their parameters enables the user to group commands into scripts. Such scripts can then be executed on a dataset in the project, or on an entire folder containing datasets. There are more than 200 shell commands in the Geocap command language. The fact that the user can assemble these commands with their parameters in any preferred order in a script gives a unique flexibility at hand.

Read more about scripts: Programming in Geocap.