Framsticks command line interface is free. It is faster and simpler than the GUI (no overheads), and it is recommended, especially for long-term experiments. It can also act as a server.
To learn about command-line parameters, run frams -?
Interactive command-line
To run the interactive command-line program (with its own shell), just execute it. (For Windows console, run frams.exe; for UNIX/Linux, run frams).
Enter help to see help, enter lm to see more options. See frams.ini file, too. Note that you can access class browser (it is also available in Framsticks GUI).
To quit the program, enter qu, or the End-Of-Line character (^Z for Windows, ^D for UNIX/Linux).
Command-line
You can use arguments, for example:
frams "lo e0.gen" "st 100000000" "sa last.gen" qu
means that you
- run the program (it always loads default parameters from default.sim)
- load e0.gen (a file with genotypes)
- simulate 100 000 000 steps
- save genotypes to last.gen
- quit (qu)
frams "lo exp_03.expt" "go"
means that you
- run the program (it always loads default parameters from default.sim)
- load exp_03.expt (a file with genotypes and simulation settings)
- run simulation until the Control-C (or Control-Break) is pressed
Thus, if the exp_03.expt activates "autosave" option, then you will have periodic snapshot files of the simulation state. You can examine them with the GUI without stopping the command-line simulation, which can be interrupted by pressing control-C at any time.
Non-standard experiment definitions
If you are using an experiment definition different from standard.expdef, you must set it immediately, as the first argument in the command-line. Changing experiment definitions later (e.g. as an effect of loading .sim or .expt files) is not supported and may result in unpredictable behavior of the CLI simulator.
To set a non-standard expdef, you may use the "ex" macro: frams "ex myowndefinition" ...
Batch
You can use batch mode, for example:
frams < commands.txt
where commands.txt file contains the commands you would enter interactively.
User-defined actions, scripts and macros
See cliutils.ini file for more examples.