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2600S-901-01 Rev. C / January 2008
Section 2: TSP Programming
Series 2600 System SourceMeter® Instruments Reference Manual
Programming overview
What is a chunk?
A chunk is a single programming statement or a sequence of statements that are executed
sequentially. There are non-scripted chunks and scripted chunks.
Single statement chunk
– The following programming statement is a chunk:
print ("This is a chunk")
When the above chunk is executed, it returns the following string:
This is a chunk
Multiple statement chunk
– A chunk can also contain multiple statements. Each statement in the
line of code is to be separated by whitespace. The following chunk contains two statements:
print ("This is a chunk") print ("that has two statements")
When the above chunk is executed, the two statements are executed sequentially and the
following strings are returned:
This is a chunk
that has two statements
Multiple chunks
– The following two lines of code are two chunks. The first chunk sets the source
level of SMU A to 1V and the second chunk turns the output on.
smua.source.levelv = 1
smua.source.output = smua.OUTPUT_ON
Scripted chunk
– In a script environment, the chunk is the entire listing of test programming code.
If the two statements in the above example were created as a script, then those two lines of code
would be considered one chunk. See the topic below, “
What is a script?
The Series 2600 utilizes a Test Script Processor (TSP) to process and run individual chunks or
programs called “scripts”. A script is a collection of instrument control commands and
programming statements.
shows an example of how to create (and load) a script
named “test.” When this script is run, the message “This is a test” will be displayed on the Series
2600 and sent to the PC.
As shown, a script is made up of a chunk of programming code that is framed by shell commands.
The first shell command in
loads the script named “test.” The last shell command marks
the end of the script.
The chunk in
consists of three lines of code. When the chunk is executed, the test
messages will be sent and displayed. The following command executes the chunk:
test()
