Putting Multiple Commands On The Same Line; Scpi Termination And Separator Syntax - Agilent Technologies ESA-E Series Programmer's Manual

Programming Fundamental s
Putting Multiple Commands on the Same Line
Putting Multiple Commands on the Same Lin e
Multiple commands can be written on the same line, reducing your cod e
space requirement. To do this :
• Commands must be separated with a semicolon ( ;).
• If the commands are in different subsystems, the key word for the
new subsystem must be preceded by a colon ( :).
• If the commands are in the same subsystem, the full hierarchy of th e
command key words need not be included . The second command can
start at the same key word level as the command that was jus t
executed.
SCPI Termination and Separator Syntax
A terminator must be provided when an instrument is controlled usin g
RS-232 . There are several issues to be understood about choosing the
proper SCPI terminator and separator when this is the case . There i s
no current SCPI standard for RS-232 . Although one intent of SCPI is to
be interface independent, <END> is only defined for IEEE 488
operation. At the time of this writing, the RS-232 terminator issue wa s
in the process of being addressed in IEEE standard 1174 .
A semicolon ( ;) is not a SCPI terminator, it is a separator. The purpos e
of the separator is to queue multiple commands or queries in order to
obtain multiple actions and/or responses . Make sure that you do no t
attempt to use the semicolon as a terminator when using RS-232
control.
Basically all binary trace and response data is terminated wit h
<NL><END>, as defined in Section 8 .5 of IEEE Standard 488 .2-1992 ,
IEEE Standard Codes, Formats, Protocols and Common Commands fo r
Use with ANSI/IEEE Std
488.1-1987.
New York, NY11992 .
The following are some examples of good and bad commands . The
examples are created from an ESA spectrum analyzer with the simple
set of commands indicated below:
[ :SENSe ]
:POWe r
[ :RF ]
:ATTenuation 40dB
:TRIGge r
[ :SEQuence ]
:EXTernal [1 ]
:SLOPe
POSitive
[ :SENSe ]
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