The Maestro Command Language

This chapter contains a listing of all supported Maestro commands, their functions, and their usage options.

You can use Maestro commands by entering them in the Command Input Area of the main window. To display the Command Input Area, choose Inin the Maestro main window, choose Window → Command Input Area, press Ctrl+Shift+I (⇧⌘I), or click the Command Input Area button in the Workspace Configuration Toolbox.

Maestro commands are one-line commands. They consist of a keyword and zero or more options and zero or more operands. Options are of the form name=value, while operands are names. The syntax of a Maestro command is:

keyword [options] [operand]

For example:

entryimport wsreplace=trueall=true format=maestro ligands.mae

In the example given, entryimport is the keyword. As this example illustrates, the first item entered must be a keyword, and this keyword must match a known keyword completely, i.e., to all characters. Maestro does have an alias facility, which allows you to map keywords to shorter names, for example, entryimport to simply import. These substitutions are made before the command is processed. See the alias command for details. You can set up aliases in Maestro, in the Command Aliases settings section of the Preferences Panel.These can be saved, and are read in when Maestro starts.

Command options are used to set values that generally correspond to states within the program. Any number of option name= value pairs can be specified. Options can be of type: Boolean (yes/no, y/n, t/f, and true/false are valid values), string, integer, or real.

Once an option is set, its value persists for all subsequent commands until it is specified again. A command consisting only of a keyword and options sets the states corresponding to those option values, but does not perform any other action. For example, the command:

entryimport format=maestroall=true

does not import structures from any file. It only sets the format for subsequent file reading and specifies that all structures contained in the subsequently specified file be imported. If the following command is then issued:

entryimport ligands.mae

all structures from the ligands.mae Maestro file are imported.

The operand is the remaining element of a Maestro command. The type of operand required is dependent on the specific command. For entryimport, the operand must be a file name. For other commands, it may be one or more atom numbers, or a string describing arbitrary atom sets, specified using Maestro's Atom Specification Language (ASL). For more information about ASL, see Atom Specification Language.

The syntax of each Maestro command is given in the topics listed below.