WHAT IF knows many ways to log results, or the history of what you did. All
results that you obtain can be written in logfiles (See DOLOG and NOLOG).
You can write notes in notebooks (See NOTES). You can store results in a very
primitive spreadsheet (See TABLES). You can log the commands that you type
for future application in a script file (See AUTOON and AUTOOF). Many
of the commands that you gave are stored in the history (See HISTOR). You
can see the first six characters of the last 100 commands that you entered
with the .P
command. On most hardware you can use the 4 arrows to move through previous
and present commands.
Mostly when you execute a major command, WHAT IF writes one line with
comments about this option in a small
history file. You can recall the last twenty entries in this file by using
the command HISTOR. Be aware that only the larger part of the major events
are written in this
history file. In case you use groups or rows, the history line and the name
of the group or row are identical. This can sometimes help to overcome
problems with the names of rows or groups. If you for example perform a
logical AND on two rows (lets say the rows 2 and 3), and thereafter change
the contents of for example row 2, then the name of the result row of the
logical AND says 'logical AND on the rows 2 and 3', but that than is the
previous row 2 (for example). In such cases the name of the previous
row 2 might still be obtainable from the history logger.
Since adding source code to do the history logging is dull and tedious work,
its implementation is far from complete.
Sorry.
The exclamation mark as first character of a line indicates to WHAT IF that
the command given is a command to the command logger and repeater. Instead
of an exclamation mark, a dot can also be used.
You now have several possibilities:
Just give a command without an exclamation mark or dot as the first
character. This command will be executed as requested, and logged for
future (re-)use. This is how WHAT IF normally works...
Give two exclamation marks or dots. In this case the previous command will
be repeated. Be aware that only commands given as a menu command will be
used by the command logger. It does not look at answers to questions that
WHAT IF asks you as the result of a command. Also, from long lines that
extensively use the type-ahead facility, only the last command can be
repeated, so:
LISTA 1 2 LISTA 11 12
!!
Will only list the residues 11 and 12
If you give an exclamation mark (or a dot) followed by the character P,
or by the word SHOW (do not use spaces in between) you get a list of the
first 6 characters of the commands issued recently. Maximally 100 commands
will be remembered by WHAT IF. The command with the highest number was
executed most recently.
If you give an exclamation (or a dot) followed by the number of a command,
this command will be executed.
If you give an exclamation (or a dot) followed by the first N characters
of a previously executed command, then the most recently issued command
that has these same first N characters will be repeated.
Commands that start with a percent sign will be recalled with a percent
sign. Commands that should be issued from a certain menu (like all commands
that are neither a general command, nor start with a percent sign) should
of course only be recalled while being in that menu.
In contrast to the history logger, the command logger works on all
commands, but not on question answer sessions. So for example if you
execute a LISTA command, and answer the question about the residue range
with 3, and thereafter use a !LIS command to recall this LISTA command,
then you will again be prompted for the residue range. If you use the
command LISTA 3 (on one line) than repeating this command will list
the atomic information for residue 3 again; the command will be
repeated including the additional input given to the command.
The DOLOG and NOLOG commands can be used to get results written into a file.
The command DOLOG will cause WHAT IF to prompt you for a file name. After
that you are asked if you want to write some comments in this file. Here you
can keep typing comments till you give an empty line, or, as usual, give
just 0 (zero). All results that are written to the terminal are from now
on also written to this log file. HELP, and other local information, as well
as the communication between you and WHAT IF that is needed to get to
any results often is not written to the log file.
The command NOLOG can be used to finish logging results in the log file that
was created with the DOLOG command. When you give NOLOG, WHAT IF will tell
you the name of the log file that it closes, so you do not have to remember
this name.