ADVANCED TOPICS

Multiple Commands

The `index' and `find' commands return a list. If you want to apply some command to each of the items on the list, then you can use the extension `+'. For example, suppose there are twelve items under the /COSINE/specs item, and you want to perform the `overview' command on them all, then you can use the `index' command to get the list, and the extension `+ overview' to get the overview of each of them. This is a lot easier than sending a `goto' and an `overview' twelve times. Try sending the following commands: start goto /COSINE/specs index + overview You will be sent a message with an overview of each of the items under /COSINE/specs.

Limiting the Size of the Result

Some mail systems are not capable of handling large messages. If you are using one of these systems, you may find that when you get a large file back from CONCISE something goes wrong. If you find that there is a problem with large files, you can limit the size of the returned result by using the `max-size' command. For example, to limit the size of a returned message to 150000 characters (about 2000 lines) use the following command at the beginning of your message: start max-size 150000 The result will be sent back in a series of messages, each of which is no bigger than 150000 characters.

Personal reminders

If you store the commands that you send to the CONCISE service, you may wish to annotate them with your own comments, in order to remind you what it is for. (This is analogous to putting comments into a computer program.) This can be done by putting `//' at the begining of a line. All subsequent text on the line will be ignored by CONCISE but may be useful to you eg. start // CONCISE commands to return indexes of the top three levels // This may return a large file as a result. top max-size 500000 index + index + index