Extended Commands  
   
Extended Commands Whenever an unrecognized command is entered in command mode without a line number, the system will take the first word of the command and use it to look up a program in the *cmd or *cmd/system directory. For example, if you enter the command:

->mike was here

The system will look for the program "*cmd/mike" or, if not found, "*cmd/system/mike". If the program is found, the system will call the program and pass the complete line following the file name (or " was here" in this example) to the program.

This facility allows the programmer to extend the development environment with their own programs, as well as, simple access to a variety of additional commands included with the development suite. By convention, user developed commands should be placed in the "*cmd" directory with system supplied command in "*cmd/system". This allows system commands to be updated whenever new versions of the software are downloaded.

Some of the most commonly used system commands are:

Command Description
cd Change current directory (similar to the 'cd' command in Unix/Linux)
clip Utility to copy line to the clip_board
color/colour Utility to control the syntax colours used to list programs on the screen.
cp Copy file. Click here for more details.
dbg Text mode debug utility. Click here for more details.
dd Quick invocation of the Data Dictionary Maintenance
dir Directory list and display utility. Click here for more details.
ds Quick invocation of the Data Source Maintenance for defining Views data sources
f Simple find string utility. Enter 'f xxxx' to find and display all occurrences of xxxx in your program.
gui Quick invocation of the GUI based system utilities
it Quick invocation of the Graphical Editor/Integrated Toolkit *IT. When executed, the current program (if not passworded) will be automatically loaded into the graphical editor.
join Command to join two lines together. Enter 'join xxxxx yyyyy" to append line xxxxx to the end of line yyyyy.
kill Terminate a process. Click here for more details.
ll List labels command to display all line labels in the current program.
loadbbx Utility to do an inline conversion and load of a BBx program. Enter "loadbbx pathname" to convert and load the BBx program in the pathname specified.
ls List directory is a command similar to the Unix/Linux 'ls' command. Enter 'ls pathname' to list the filenames found in the directory. Wild cards (*) can be provided.
lv List all the variable used by the current program or if invoked with a variable name following the 'lv' command the utility will list all lines that reference the specified variable.
new Issues a DELETE and BEGIN to clear the current workspace and close all open files.
obj Utility to display the properties and methods for an object. Enter 'obj xxxxx' where xxxxx contains the object handle to display.
paste Command to paste the contents of the clip_board into the current program.
pwd Display the current directory. Click here for more details.
recall Recall a prior version of the current program from the internal version history buffers.
rw Quick invocation of the Report Writer
tasks View a list of PxPlus tasks currently running and/or search for open files. Click here for more details.
users View PxPlus users and their associated process ids. Click here for more details.
ver Utility to display information about the program currently in memory including date saved, who saved it, program size, and security information.
vu Quick invocation of the Views maintenance utility.
wdw Adjust the window size of the main window Click here for more details.
  Commands shown in green are +PxPlus Exclusives