Current Page: NeXtMidas User's Guide System Operation Metacharacters Table of Metacharacters
| #### Table of Metacharacters Many characters have special meaning in the NeXtMidas shell. This table lists their precedence (from highest to lowest) and function.
Character | Position | Function
--- | --- | ---
& | end | Continues command to next line. In a macro, the line following is concatenated without its leading white space.
&& | end | No continuation, becomes literal final &
? | end | Prompts for command arguments. Does not function within macros.
$ | start | Forces command to be executed in the shell that is running NeXtMidas (instead of a subshell). This is run from Java and does not affect your Unix or other shell.
$$ | start | Forces command to operating system. This will affect your Unix or other shell.
! (bang) | start | Recalls recent commands.
! (bang) | anywhere | Designates inline commenting within a macro (except within doublequotes).
| (pipe) | between arguments | Used by commands such as PLOT to indicate a group of files. Also used by some commands to indicate multiple mask (flag) values.
/ | after command name | Applies following switch to command.
, (comma) | between arguments | Separates arguments.
(space) | between arguments | Separates arguments.
^ (caret) | before name | Forces the substitution of the result or macro argument name following.
{ } | after a caret | Defines the range of characters to which the caret (^) applies.
{ } | anywhere | Defines the start and end to a NeXtMidas table definition (see Tables).
{ } | after filename | Treats characters in the brackets as file name qualifiers.
" " | around argument | Preserves characters bracketed by " " as a leteral string argument, leaving the white space and capitalization alone.
% | before macro name | Designates the macro as a user macro.
_ (underscore) | before file name | Designates the file name as the name of a pipe in a piped macro.
( ) | after file name | Treats characters bracketed by ( ) as a file name trimmer.
( ) | around expression | Groups expressions in an inline calculation.
[ ] | after a `STARTMACRO` argument | Defines the default value for that argument.
[ ] | within ASK prompt | Defines the default for the ASK prompt.
: (colon) | between type and name | Separates type from argument or result label.
: (colon) | in trim qualifier | Separates start from end.