SPECX is made available by typing:
and started by typing:
The program will display the current version number and a brief informational message, then the SPECX prompt (») will appear.
Commands may then be entered to read and process data. SPECX commands consist of one or more
keywords, separated by hyphens. Minimum matching is applied to each keyword individually. A full
list of all valid SPECX commands may be found by entering show-commands, with a carriage return in
response to the resulting prompt. On-line help is available using the command help. However, the
on-line help is mainly a copy from the VMS VERSION 6.3. There are some added topics on the UNIX
version.
A shell command may be executed by preceding it with a $, e.g.
The tab and blank characters, ‘,’, ‘\’ and ‘;’ are SPECX delimiters; to pass these to the shell the entire string must be enclosed in single inverted commas, e.g.
The exit or quit commands are the normal method of returning to the shell. SPECX can also be
suspended in the usual way with Control-Z and later resumed with the shell command
fg.
In some situations SPECX has to be given an end-of-file character. On VMS this was Control-Z. On UNIX it is Control-D. As of V6.7-1 Control-C can be used to abort a command in progress.