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Input Conventions

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Input Conventions

Section 3: Input Conventions

The input conventions of the debugger’s command processor are summarized below, along with the tree for the command syntax. The command processor prompt character is ">" for the debugger and "/" for the debugger nub (actually, the character is repeated once for each nesting level of the debugger). Whenever a valid command is recognized, the debugger prompts for the parameters associated with that command (if any are required) according to the conventions described below. Typing DEL terminates the command; ? gives a list of valid commands. When a command requires a [confirm] (CR), the debugger enters wait-for-DEL mode if an invalid character is typed.

String input

Identifiers are sequences of characters beginning with an upper or lower case letter and terminating with a space (SP) or a carriage return (CR); identifiers must be typed with their correct capitalization. The debugger echoes a delimiting character of its own choice in order to minimize loss of information from the display.

Numeric input

A numeric parameter is a sequence of characters terminated by SP or CR. If the parameter is not a numeric constant it will be processed by the Debugger Interpreter (see Section 5); any expression which evaluates to a number is legal (the target type must be (LONG) INTEGER, CARDINAL, or UNSPECIFIED). The default radix is octal for addresses (and input to octal commands) and decimal for everything else (unless otherwise specified in Section 4). The "D" or "d" suffix forces decimal interpretation; "B" or "b" forces octal.

Default values

The debugger saves the last values used as parameters to all of the commands; these values may be recalled by the escape key (ESC). The following parameters have default values which may be used or inspected by typing ESC: octal read address, octal write address, ascii read address, root configuration, configuration, module, procedure, condition, expression, process, address, and frame. After the default parameter is displayed by the debugger, the standard input editing characters may be used to modify it. Typing ESC to the command processor uses the last command as the default command (i.e., you receive the prompt for the parameters, if any, for the previously executed command).

Editing characters

The standard input editing characters accepted during input are: CONTROL-A, CONTROL-H, or BS to delete a character, and CONTROL-W or BW to delete a word.

Command Tree

The command tree structure for the Mesa debugger appears as an appendix at the end of this document. Capitalized letters are typed by the user (in either upper or lower case); the lower case substrings are echoed by the command processor. Each command (and its parameters) is described in Section 4.