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Copyright © 2000 Hewlett-Packard Co. Command Language 4-1
Ski IA-64 Simulator Reference Manual 1.0L
4 Command Language
The Ski command language is simple, efficient, and easy to learn. It consists of commands you can invoke from the key-
board or from a command file (see Chapter 9, “Command Files”). Each command is given with an appropriate set of argu-
ments (some optional) to further qualify the command. Commonly-used commands may be abbreviated as described in
Appendix A, “Command Reference” and commands may be repeated easily. A limited on-line help facility (the help
command) is provided for quick reference. This chapter presents the syntax of the command language. Information about
specific commands (command semantics) is in later chapters and in Appendix A, “Command Reference”.
4.1 Command Entry
xski
and
ski
provide similar mechanisms for controlling the simulator. Both provide for direct keyboard entry of com-
mands. In addition,
xski
offers buttons, menus, and the Command History to minimize typing, as described Section 3.7.1,
“The xski Main Window”, and
ski
provides the command repetition mechanism for the same purpose, as described in
Section 3.7.2, “The ski Command Window”.You give a command to Ski by typing the command name at the keyboard
followed by operands and the enter/return key. (Use the help command to see a menu of available commandsor help fol-
lowed by the command name to see the command syntax.)
xski
displays the command you typed in the Command area of
the Main Window.
ski
displays the command in the Command Window at the bottom of the screen following the *
prompt. Commands are case sensitive. When you hit the enter/return key, Ski acts on your command and updates the
screen to reflect any changes caused by the command. For example, the command
db
causes the Data Window to show the contents of lower addresses in memory.
4.2 Command Arguments
Some commands, such as save, require additional information. If you don’t provide the information, Ski displays an error
message. Some commands have optional arguments. As described in “Syntax Conventions” on page -iii, command sum-
maries in this manual show optional arguments surrounded by square brackets [like this]. If you don’t specify an optional
argument, Ski uses a suitable default value. For example,
pf 3
causes the Program Window to advance three bundles after the last bundle in the Program Window, while
pf
alone moves the Program Window ahead one windowful. Some arguments can be supplied in a list, one or more times;
these are shown by putting a plus sign (“+”) after the argument name like this+. For example, the syntax description for
the =1 command is:
=1 address_or_symbol value+
which suggests that the command
=1 __data_start 12 56 90 cd
assigns the hexadecimal values 12, 56, 90, and cd to the four bytes starting at the location specified by the symbol
__data_start. Brackets and plus signs can be combined, [like this]+, to signify optional arguments that can be supplied
zero or more times.
4.3 Command Sequences, Repetition, and Abbreviation
You can type multiple commands on a single command line by separating the individual commands with semicolons
(“;”). This is called a “command sequence”. Command sequences make re-executing a series of commands easy, using
the Command History mechanism of
xski
(see Section 3.7.1, “The xski Main Window”) or the command repetition
mechanism of
ski
(see Section 3.7.2, “The ski Command Window”). For example, you might want to repeatedly execute