CS 1500
Making a Script
Once you are satisfied that your program is complete and runs
correctly, you will make a script (record) of running your program. You
will turn in the script (in a separate file) along with your program
source code.
Suppose that your program is called prog1.cpp. In the terminal,
make sure you are in the directory with you program:
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) script prog1.script
Script started, file is prog1.script
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) g++ prog1.cpp
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) a.out
Hello World!
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) exitScript done, file is prog1.script
Here's an explanation of what you just did: The "script"
command
turns on a program that makes a record of whatever appears on the
screen. The
command you entered was "script prog1.script" so the record
the script
program makes will be a file called prog1.script.
Enter "a.out" and see your "Hello World!" message
written to
the screen again. Now enter "exit" to turn off the scripting
program. From the time you entered "script prog1.script" to
the time
you entered "exit", all things that were written on the screen
were
also recorded in the file called prog1.script.
Enter clear to clear the screen. Now enter "cat
prog1.script".
This causes the computer to type the contents of the script file you
made.
It should look something like this:
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) cat prog1.script
Script started on Tue Jan 29 18:52:53 2008
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) g++ prog1.cpp
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) a.out
Hello World!
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) exit
script done on Tue Jan 29 18:53:51 2008
Note that the
script file (named prog1.script) starts and ends with "timestamps" that tell when the
script was started, and when it was completed. In between it reproduces what
you typed.
Now enter "pico prog1.script" so you can look at the script
file with
the PICO editor. You see your script. You also see "weird" characters
in the
script like ^M at the end of each line, and maybe some other things.
These
characters are an undesirable side-effect of the way the scripting
program
interacts with special characters that handle the terminal display. The
weird
characters are sometimes visible, and sometimes not, depending on just
how you
try to display your script file. The characters were not visible when
you
displayed prog1.script with "cat," but they were visible when
you used PICO. Do a ^x command (hold down the "ctrl" key and
press "x") to exit PICO.
When you turn in a real programming assignment, you will be sending me
the
source code, plus a script similar to the one you just made. The script
will
be a record that will show me that you did the right kind of testing of
your
program.
I require you to run your script through a filter before you send it to
me.
It's a way to get rid of most of the weird characters, so the script
will be
more readable. It is easy to do, no matter how big the script is.
Here's how: Enter "cat prog1.script | col
-b >
temp". This command pipes the script file to the input
of the
command "col -b > temp", which filters out some of the
weird
characters and writes the output to a file named temp. Now the temp
file is
the filtered version of the script. Enter "mv
temp prog1.script" to replace the script file with the
new
filtered version. Now enter "pico prog1.script" again. See how
the
file has been cleaned up? Good. Exit PICO again by doing a ^x command.
In summary:
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) cat
prog1.script | col -b > temp
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) mv temp
prog1.script
mmartin@soleil:(~/1500) pico
prog1.script