The 'acol' Command-line Utility

O2scl contains a command-line utility, acol, designed to facilitate the manipulation of various objects stored in HDF5 files. It can handle integers, characters, double-precision floating point numbers, size_t objects, arrays of any of these types, or O2scl objects of type o2scl::table, o2scl::hist, o2scl::table3d, o2scl::hist_2d, o2scl::tensor_grid and o2scl::contour_line .

acol can only operate with one object at a time. The basic workflow is:

The available command list can be obtained using 'help' or 'commands' and changes depending on what type of object is currently in memory. In order to list the commands which would be available given a particular type, give 'commands' the type as an argument, i.e. acol -commands table . In order to get detailed help on how a command operates on a particular type, give the type and the command as arguments to help, e.g. acol -help table interp. There are some commands which are available for all types, and obtaining the help information for these commands does not require a type argument, i.e. acol -commands or acol -help read.

acol can sometimes, but not always read and write HDF5 files generated outside of O2scl .

acol has a command, run, which allows you to run a set of commands which are given in a separate file. An example script in the extras directory of the documentation is named acol.scr. The associated output is a useful demonstration of the capabilities of acol.

#
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# This file documents the use of the 'acol' command. The command
# 'help' provides the full help text. You can also get help on the
# commands individually, e.g.
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> help create
Usage: create <type> [...]

Create an object.

Create a new object of type <type>. For types char, double, int, size_t, and 
string, this takes one additional argument which holds the value. For type 
table, this option creates a new table with one column whose entries are an 
evenly-spaced grid. In this case four additional arguments are needed: the 
name of the column, the first value, the maximum possible value, and the 
increment between successive values. For array types double[] int[], and 
size_t[], the user must specify the size of the array and a function of the 
array index 'i' to fill the array. If an object is currently in memory, it is 
deallocated before creating the new object. 
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# The full command list is given with 'commands'
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> commands
Command list:

alias       exit        help        output      set         
calc        filelist    interactive preview     show-units  
commands    generic     internal    quit        type        
create      get         license     read        version     
download    get-conv    no-intro    run         warranty    

# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Use 'create' to create a table with one column
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> create table x 0 1 0.1
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Use 'function' to apply a function to create a new column
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> function sin(x) s
> function sqrt(1-s*s) c
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# The 'deriv' command computes derivatives
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> deriv x s c2
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Use 'output' to see the results
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> output
 x             s             c             c2           
 0.000000e+00  0.000000e+00  1.000000e+00  9.999995e-01 
 1.000000e-01  9.983342e-02  9.950042e-01  9.950034e-01 
 2.000000e-01  1.986693e-01  9.800666e-01  9.800667e-01 
 3.000000e-01  2.955202e-01  9.553365e-01  9.553335e-01 
 4.000000e-01  3.894183e-01  9.210610e-01  9.210695e-01 
 5.000000e-01  4.794255e-01  8.775826e-01  8.775485e-01 
 6.000000e-01  5.646425e-01  8.253356e-01  8.254605e-01 
 7.000000e-01  6.442177e-01  7.648422e-01  7.643741e-01 
 8.000000e-01  7.173561e-01  6.967067e-01  6.984518e-01 
 9.000000e-01  7.833269e-01  6.216100e-01  6.150954e-01 
 1.000000e+00  8.414710e-01  5.403023e-01  5.646134e-01 
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Or give 'output' command an argument to output to a file
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> output test.txt
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Change the output precision using set
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> set precision 4
> output
 x           s           c           c2         
 0.0000e+00  0.0000e+00  1.0000e+00  1.0000e+00 
 1.0000e-01  9.9833e-02  9.9500e-01  9.9500e-01 
 2.0000e-01  1.9867e-01  9.8007e-01  9.8007e-01 
 3.0000e-01  2.9552e-01  9.5534e-01  9.5533e-01 
 4.0000e-01  3.8942e-01  9.2106e-01  9.2107e-01 
 5.0000e-01  4.7943e-01  8.7758e-01  8.7755e-01 
 6.0000e-01  5.6464e-01  8.2534e-01  8.2546e-01 
 7.0000e-01  6.4422e-01  7.6484e-01  7.6437e-01 
 8.0000e-01  7.1736e-01  6.9671e-01  6.9845e-01 
 9.0000e-01  7.8333e-01  6.2161e-01  6.1510e-01 
 1.0000e+00  8.4147e-01  5.4030e-01  5.6461e-01 
> set precision 6
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Shell commands are proceeded by an '!'
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> !cat test.txt
acol: Executing system command: cat test.txt
 x             s             c             c2           
 0.000000e+00  0.000000e+00  1.000000e+00  9.999995e-01 
 1.000000e-01  9.983342e-02  9.950042e-01  9.950034e-01 
 2.000000e-01  1.986693e-01  9.800666e-01  9.800667e-01 
 3.000000e-01  2.955202e-01  9.553365e-01  9.553335e-01 
 4.000000e-01  3.894183e-01  9.210610e-01  9.210695e-01 
 5.000000e-01  4.794255e-01  8.775826e-01  8.775485e-01 
 6.000000e-01  5.646425e-01  8.253356e-01  8.254605e-01 
 7.000000e-01  6.442177e-01  7.648422e-01  7.643741e-01 
 8.000000e-01  7.173561e-01  6.967067e-01  6.984518e-01 
 9.000000e-01  7.833269e-01  6.216100e-01  6.150954e-01 
 1.000000e+00  8.414710e-01  5.403023e-01  5.646134e-01 
acol: Done with system command (returned 0).
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Or store the results in the internal format 
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> internal test.o2
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Generic text files can be read using the 'generic' command
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> generic table test.txt
> output
 x             s             c             c2           
 0.000000e+00  0.000000e+00  1.000000e+00  9.999995e-01 
 1.000000e-01  9.983342e-02  9.950042e-01  9.950034e-01 
 2.000000e-01  1.986693e-01  9.800666e-01  9.800667e-01 
 3.000000e-01  2.955202e-01  9.553365e-01  9.553335e-01 
 4.000000e-01  3.894183e-01  9.210610e-01  9.210695e-01 
 5.000000e-01  4.794255e-01  8.775826e-01  8.775485e-01 
 6.000000e-01  5.646425e-01  8.253356e-01  8.254605e-01 
 7.000000e-01  6.442177e-01  7.648422e-01  7.643741e-01 
 8.000000e-01  7.173561e-01  6.967067e-01  6.984518e-01 
 9.000000e-01  7.833269e-01  6.216100e-01  6.150954e-01 
 1.000000e+00  8.414710e-01  5.403023e-01  5.646134e-01 
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Files in the internal format can be read with 'read'
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> read test.o2
No name specified, found first table object named 'acol'.
> output
 x             s             c             c2           
 0.000000e+00  0.000000e+00  1.000000e+00  9.999995e-01 
 1.000000e-01  9.983342e-02  9.950042e-01  9.950034e-01 
 2.000000e-01  1.986693e-01  9.800666e-01  9.800667e-01 
 3.000000e-01  2.955202e-01  9.553365e-01  9.553335e-01 
 4.000000e-01  3.894183e-01  9.210610e-01  9.210695e-01 
 5.000000e-01  4.794255e-01  8.775826e-01  8.775485e-01 
 6.000000e-01  5.646425e-01  8.253356e-01  8.254605e-01 
 7.000000e-01  6.442177e-01  7.648422e-01  7.643741e-01 
 8.000000e-01  7.173561e-01  6.967067e-01  6.984518e-01 
 9.000000e-01  7.833269e-01  6.216100e-01  6.150954e-01 
 1.000000e+00  8.414710e-01  5.403023e-01  5.646134e-01 
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Tables also contain constant values in addition to data
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> assign pi acos(-1.0)
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# The 'list' command lists the column and constant names
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> list
table name: acol
1 constant:
pi 3.141593e+00
4 columns: 
0. x  1. s  2. c  3. c2 
11 lines of data.
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Constants can be used in expressions
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> function x*pi/2 x2
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Columns can be renamed. 
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> rename x2 x_2
> output
 x             s             c             c2            x_2          
 []            []            []            []            []           
 0.000000e+00  0.000000e+00  1.000000e+00  9.999995e-01  0.000000e+00 
 1.000000e-01  9.983342e-02  9.950042e-01  9.950034e-01  1.570796e-01 
 2.000000e-01  1.986693e-01  9.800666e-01  9.800667e-01  3.141593e-01 
 3.000000e-01  2.955202e-01  9.553365e-01  9.553335e-01  4.712389e-01 
 4.000000e-01  3.894183e-01  9.210610e-01  9.210695e-01  6.283185e-01 
 5.000000e-01  4.794255e-01  8.775826e-01  8.775485e-01  7.853982e-01 
 6.000000e-01  5.646425e-01  8.253356e-01  8.254605e-01  9.424778e-01 
 7.000000e-01  6.442177e-01  7.648422e-01  7.643741e-01  1.099557e+00 
 8.000000e-01  7.173561e-01  6.967067e-01  6.984518e-01  1.256637e+00 
 9.000000e-01  7.833269e-01  6.216100e-01  6.150954e-01  1.413717e+00 
 1.000000e+00  8.414710e-01  5.403023e-01  5.646134e-01  1.570796e+00 
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# (Remove test files created earlier.)
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
> !rm test.txt
acol: Executing system command: rm test.txt
acol: Done with system command (returned 0).
> !rm test.o2
acol: Executing system command: rm test.o2
acol: Done with system command (returned 0).

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