ASK

The ASK command allows you to request a value from within a command file. ASK is a normal command with three prompts:

Prompt? (string)

Variable? (string)

Value? (string)

Thus, as an example,

    >> ask 'next value' n ?

will cause GENLIB to go looking for a value in the calling command file, or failing that, at interactive level. You can alternatively ``answer" an ASK command with an expression or a value, although it might be simpler to use a simple assignment in that case.

Note that this implementation allows you to build up command files which function as new commands: the difference between this construct and the simple ? response to a prompt is that here the new value is stored in the variable (n in this case), and can be used more than once within the command file. By doing it this way rather than referring the request for input directly to the terminal you can call this ``subcommand" from within another command file AND supply values, so that no terminal input is then necessary.

see also the READ command to read from an internal character string.