Five-Minute Tutorial: Encounter Command Line Help

Hi everyone, and welcome to the first Five-Minute Tutorial! I have several things planned for this series. Today we're going to look at getting help on the command line in the Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) system.

Sometimes in the middle of an EDI session, you want to run a command but you can't remember the exact name, or the exact options. Sometimes you don't even know if a command exists to do what you want, but you'd like to find out if it does. Obviously, you can always look at the EDI System Text Command Reference. (And I recommend doing so to learn all about the various EDI commands. This is a manual that I use every single day!) But sometimes you just want a quick reference at your fingertips. This is available in the form of command-line help.

Let's say you want to report the transition violations in your design. You know there's a command to do that, but you don't recall if it's report_tran_violation, reportTranViolation, or something else similar. At the EDI command prompt, you can type:

encounter 31> help report_t*
Multiple commands found:
      report_timing
      report_timing_derate
      report_timing_format

encounter 32> help reportT*
Multiple commands found:
      reportTimingDerate
      reportTimingLib
      reportTranViolation

Ah, there it is! But what are the options for this command? Now that we know the exact command name, we can do this:

encounter 33> help reportTranViolation
Usage: reportTranViolation
    reportTranViolation
    [-all | -noGlobalNets]
    [-selNetFile <selNetFileName>]
    [-excNetFile <excNetFileName>]
    [-useDrcMargin]
    -outfile
    <fileName>

Great! If we want more detailed info, we can then go to the Text Command Reference, but there is yet another form of help we can get right from the command line.

HOMEWORK: See what happens when you type "man reportTranViolation".

Something to be aware of: In Encounter versions 8.1 and earlier, the wildcard character * in the examples above was not required.

Another way to find command names is by using the tab key:

encounter 36> legalize <press the tab key>
legalizeFPlan  legalizePin

You could also just type the partial command name and get a message which lists the possibilities:

encounter 38> legalize
ambiguous command name "legalize": legalizeFPlan legalizePin

BE CAREFUL with this one though - if what you enter is an actual command name, you will inadvertently run that command!

I hope you've found this five-minute tutorial useful.


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