Help on molly

There are now two systems of help on molly. First there is the internal help and of recent origin is this html-based system. The help on molly commands is written at the top of the equivalent subroutine which has the considerable advantage that it might actually stay up to date. The internal molly help reads a file which points to these subroutines and the relevant text is then printed to the screen.

The internal help is accessed by typing "help ". It supports wildcards so that "help *pt*" will locate all commands with "pt" in their name.

If you are starting with molly then probably the best way to find your way around is to type "help class" which lists classes into which molly commands have been loosely classified. This can make searching for a command much easier. For example if you want to input FIGARO spectra, then look in the "input" class where all commands to do with input are listed. If you know the class, you can type "help class input" to go straight to a list of commands to do with input.

The html-based help does not have the wildcard facility (unless you dig around in the correct directory), but it makes up for this with much greater cross-linkage. Thus the help on each command lists the classes that the command falls into and thus can point the way to finding similar commands. For some commands it also contains links to closely related commands which can also help in your search for a suitable command. Most of the html based help is generated automatically with a C program and should remain up-to-date. The html based-help can be reached through the following links:

  • commands -- full comand list.
  • classes -- full class list.
    • Tom Marsh, Warwick.