sclipi

README

* Overview

*Sclipi* is a command line tool for sending *SCPI* commands. *SCPI* is a standard syntax for remotely controlling test and measurement devices.

 *Sclipi* features:
- Auto-completion support!
- History support (Up key cycles through previous commands)
- Interactive and non-interactive operation
- Saving command history to file
- Running scripts from file
- Copying response to clipboard
- Copying entire session to clipboard

Upcoming features:
- Device discovery via mDNS/DNS-SD
 
* Usage

** Interactive-Mode
By default *Sclipi* runs in interactive mode. This mode drops you into a shell where auto-completion and custom commands are enabled. 

You will be presented with a prompt asking for the IP address of the target instrument. Auto-completion will assist by suggesting the first 3 octets of each of the network interfaces on your machine.

Once the connection is established, an auto-completion prompt will appear with all of the available options. Type any of these to get started:
- ~:~ and ~*~: SCPI commands
- ~-~: Actions (Show history, Save to script, Run script, Copy result to clipboard, etc)
- ~$~: Shell Passthrough (e.g. ~$clear~ to clear the terminal)
- ~?~: Help
- ~quit~ or ~exit~: Exit the shell

The behavior can be tweaked with various arguments, including:
- ~-a|--address <ip-address|hostname>~: Connect to instrument this address (skips IP address prompt)
- ~-p|--port <port>~: Change target SCPI socket port from the default 5025
- ~-q|--quiet~: Suppress most output to reduce clutter
- Various ~--*-color~ options: Change the default color of various elements inside the shell
 
** Non-Interactive Mode 
If you know what commands you want to run (or have them saved to a file) and don't want to drop into the interactive shell, there are two command line arguments to run SCPI command directly:
- ~-c|--command <scpi-command>~: Run the provided command and print the result, if any
- ~-f|--file <file-path>~: Run each of the commands in a newline-delimited text file sequentially, printing the results, if any

Both non-interactive arguments require that the address of the instrument is also provided using ~-a~.

* For Sclipi Developers
** Simulated Instruments
If *Sclipi* is run from a directory containing a SCPI.txt file, it supports parsing that file into a list of supported SCPI commands. The file must be in the ~:SYSTem:HELP:HEADers?~ format.

Simulation mode can be triggered two ways:
-The ~-s|--simulate~ argument
-Typing ~simulated~ into the ~-a|--address~ argument or the IP Address interactive prompt