4.3 Syntax

There are a few basic rules about the syntax of EDL scripts. Each script consists of one or more sections that always start with one of the section keywords listed above. Each section keyword has to be followed immediately (i.e. without any spaces, tabulator or newline characters in between) by a colon, `:'.

The sections of the script consist of statements. What a valid statement is may depend on the section (e.g. in the DEVICES section all valid statements are just names of devices while in other sections a valid statement may be a complicated equation), but a statement must always end in a semicolon, `;'. There is nothing special about continuing a statement on a new line (i.e. a statement can span several lines), fsc2 recognizes where a statement ends by the semicolon.

Within a statement all characters like spaces, tabulator characters and newlines have no relevance at all (except separating variable names). So there's no difference at all between the three following statements:

start_field=3360.0 G;
start_field       =               3360.0G;
                  start_field=
        3360.0 G;

The only thing you have to avoid is having a line break between a number and its unit (e.g. between the 3360.0 and the G), only spaces and tabulator characters are allowed in between (oterwise the unit will be treated as if were a variable name).

EDL scripts use lots of function calls. There are no obvious differences between variable names and function names (all start with a character, followed by more characters, numbers or underscore characters). To make clear that a word is a function it has to be followed by a pair of parenthesis, `(' and `)', even if the function does not accept arguments (spaces, tabulator or newline characters are allowed between the function name and the opening parenthesis). If a function does accept more than one argument its arguments are separated by commas.

This document was generated by Jens Thoms Toerring on September 6, 2017 using texi2html 1.82.