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#### 16.8.1 Scripts

Scripts are small programs that interact with GPS and allow you to perform complex tasks repetitively and easily. GPS includes support for two scripting languages currently, although additional languages might be added in the future. These two languages are described in the following section.

Support for scripting is currently work in progress in GPS. As a result, not many commands are currently exported by GPS, although their number is increasing daily. These commands are similar to what is available to people who extend GPS directly in Ada, but with a strong advantage: they do not require any recompilation of the GPS core, and can be tested and executed interactively.

The goal of such scripts is to be able to help automate processes such as builds, automatic generation of graphs, ...

These languages all have a separate console associated with them, which you can open from the `Tools` menu. In each of these console, GPS will display a prompt, at which you can type interactive commands. These console provide completion of the command names through the <tab> key.

For instance, in the GPS shell console you can start typing

         GPS> File

then press the <tab> key, which will list all the functions whose name starts with "File".

A similar feature is available in the python console, which also provides completion for all the standard python commands and modules.

All the scripting languages share the same set of commands exported by GPS, thanks to a abstract interface defined in the GPS core. As a result, GPS modules do not have to be modified when new scripting languages are added.

Scripts can be executed immediately upon startup of GPS by using the command line switch `--load`. Specifying the following command line:

         gps --load=shell:mytest.gps

will force the gps script `mytest.gps` to be executed immediately, before GPS starts reacting to user's requests. This is useful if you want to do some special initializations of the environment. It can also be used as a command line interface to GPS, if you script's last command is to exit GPS.

In-line commands can also be given directly on the command line through `--eval` command line switch.

For instance, if you want to analyze an entity in the entity browser from the command line, you would pass the following command switches:

         gps --eval=shell:'Entity entity_name file_name; Entity.show %1'

See the section Customizing through XML and Python files on how to bind key shortcuts to shell commands.