Agilent Technologies 5000 Series manual Simple Command Headers

More About Oscilloscope Commands 8

•When the command/keyword is longer than four characters, use the first four characters of the command/keyword unless the fourth character is a vowel; when the fourth character is a vowel, use the first three characters of the command/keyword.

•When the command/keyword is four or fewer characters, use all of the characters.

Long Form	Short form
RANGe	RANG
PATTern	PATT
TIMebase	TIM
DELay	DEL
TYPE	TYPE

In the oscilloscope programmer's documentation, the short form of a command is indicated by uppercase characters.

Programs written in long form are easily read and are almost self- documenting. The short form syntax conserves the amount of controller memory needed for program storage and reduces I/O activity.

Simple Command Headers

Simple command headers contain a single mnemonic. :AUToscale and :DIGitize are examples of simple command headers typically used in the oscilloscope. The syntax is:

<program mnemonic><terminator>

Simple command headers must occur at the beginning of a program message; if not, they must be preceded by a colon.

When program data must be included with the simple command header (for example, :DIGitize CHANnel1), white space is added to separate the data from the header. The syntax is:

<program mnemonic><separator><program data><terminator>

Compound Command Headers

Compound command headers are a combination of two or more program mnemonics. The first mnemonic selects the subsystem, and the second mnemonic selects the function within that subsystem. The mnemonics within the compound message are separated by colons. For example, to execute a single function within a subsystem:

:<subsystem>:<function><separator><program data><terminator>

Agilent InfiniiVision 5000 Series Oscilloscopes Programmer's Reference 533