Shell commands

A number of shell commands are provided for executing scripts and converting the output files to WAV format. These are described below:

tao <script>
Takes the name of a script as its argument (minus the .tao extension) and executes it, producing a file called <script>.exe. This shell script calls upon the services of the binary executable taoparse, which is described below.

taoparse <script>.tao
Binary executable which parses a Tao script, translates it into a valid C++ program, and writes the results to standard output. This is called by the tao shell script.

taosf <outputfile>
Takes the name of a file produced by an Output device, minus the .dat extension and normalises the audio samples, adding a WAV header and writing the results to a file called <outputfile>.wav. This command actually calls the tao2wav binary executable with the arguments tao2wav <outputfile>.dat <outputfile>.wav.

tao2wav <outputfile>.dat <outputfile>.wav
Binary executable used to convert a file produced by an Output device (in raw floating point format) into a WAV file.

In addition to these commands, whenever a script is invoked with the tao command a corresponding .exe file is produced. This is the actual executable which carries out the synthesis described in the script. For example the command tao <file> invokes the script <file>.tao and as a by-product produces the executable file <file>.exe. Each .exe file has one command line option, [-g]. This option causes the instrument visualisation window to be opened. If omitted the synthesis proceeds without any visualisations.

If you want to replay a synthesis described in a script you can invoke this executable file directly rather than having to re-compile the original text file containing the script.


©1999,2000 Mark Pearson m.pearson@ukonline.co.uk April 30, 2000