The Disposition Menu

At the conclusion of many commands, the user is placed into the "Disposition Menu". In this menu, data may be processed and written to either an output file, a post-processing file, the terminal, a graphics device, or to a global variable.

When dealing with data in the Disposition Menu, it is best to think of it as being a matrix. The columns of the matrix are called variables and the rows are called records. Each variable is identified by its column number or name , and one can obtain a list of the names of the variables and their column numbers by issuing the command,

     VLIST.

Throughout this menu, one selects columns with column selectors. These selectors can be a single number, a colon separated pair of numbers, or a name selector; e.g. 5, 7:8, @x:@. The colon pair selects all columns from the first number to the second one. In many cases, only a limited number of columns can be selected. In this case, the first one selected will be used. For example, suppose that you can select six values and you use 1:12 for the column selector, then only 1:6 will be used.

Sometimes, one may wish to alter the values of the data available. This can be accomplished by using either of the commands:

     C_SCALE, SCALE_F, CS(1),  CS(2), ...

     C_SHIFT, SHIRT_F, CS(1),  CS(2), ...

Here, the user simply enters a number which is either a scale factor or a shift and then a set of the column selectors which define the columns which will be altered. The SCALE command defines a multiplier by which a variable will be scaled, and the SHIFT defines a constant which will be added to the variable. One of these factors, once established, will stay in effect until it is changed with a new C_SCALE or C_SHIFT command, or until the Disposition Menu is exited.

There are several options which can be used on more than one command:

     -RECORD, BEG_RNUM, END_RNUM

     -HARD

     -BOTH

     -HEADING, HEAD

     -MAG_USE

They will be defined here and then listed for the commands for which they are applicable. The -RECORD option defines the records which will be considered. If -RECORD is omitted, all records will be considered. By default, the results for commands that produce reports (except for the REPORT command discussed above) is to write the results to the terminal. The -HARD option is instructs MOSES to produce a report on the OUTPUT channel and the -BOTH option writes the results to both the OUTPUT channel and the terminal. When these reports are written, they have a single line generic heading. The -HEADING allows one to replace the generic heading with one you specify. You can specify as many of these options as you wish. The will appear on the page in the order you specify them. The -MAG_USE option instructs MOSES to add a second heading line based on the definition of magnitude defined with the -MAG_DEFINE option.