Utility Commands

These commands are general purpose commands. They should not appear in a startup script.

command

command <text>

Send a command for execution on the client (e.g. a Fire command).

exec

exec <script_file>

Execute translate commands in a script file. Convention is for interface script files to have the extension. .ifx.

outfile

outfile <eim_file>

When an interface is deployed in console mode, its output goes to stdout, or to an eim file if the -of program switch was used. The outfile command enables output to be switched to an eim file during a session.

reset

reset {<text>}

The reset command returns an interface environment to its default state, i.e. the state it was at program startup after the startup script was executed. This will return symbology, clipping region, current working directory etc. to default values.

Some translators can have parameters directing them to use particular reset options. Most implementations of reset have no parameters.

clear_cache

clear_cache

The eim session keeps a cache of symbology and class names, when communicating with a client. Each name is given an internal integer to reference a name. This is done for 2 reasons, to reduce communication traffic and to reduce unnecessary name parsing by the client.

Sometimes the client may wish to redefine the definition of one of these, for example an object class, and must tell the translator, so that the name can be re-cached.

If the name is not re-cached, the translator will continue to refer to it by an integer value which may no longer point to valid client information.

The clear_cache command tells the translator to reset its name cache to avoid such client problems.

Network services automatically perform a clear_cache at the beginning of every command session, so this command is typically only necessary when a translator is running in client/server mode where all communication with the client is done in a single session.

quit, end or exit

quit

Exit the translator.