NAME¶

ibterm - Interactive GPIB terminal

SYNOPSIS¶

ibterm {-d primary_address} [-m minor] [-s secondary_address] [-i eoi] [-e eos] [-r reos] [-b bin] [-x xeos] [-t timeout] [-p prompt] [-f history_file] [-N] [-X] [-h]

DESCRIPTION¶

An interactive terminal program for sending commands to a device over an IEEE-488 general purpose instrument bus and printing the responses.

OPTIONS¶

-d address

Sets the device's primary address (pad). The address must be between 0 and 30.

-m number

Specify the minor number of the device file this interface board will use. A number of 0 corresponds to /dev/gpib0, 1 is /dev/gpib1, etc. Defaults to 0.

-s address

Sets the device's secondary address (sad). The address must be 0 (disabled) or between 96 and 126 (0x60 and 0x7e hexadecimal). Defaults to 0.

-i 0|1

Assert EIO with last byte sent. Defaults to 1 (true).

-e code

ASCII code of end-of-string (eos) character. The code must be between 0 and 255. Defaults to 0 (no code).

-r 0|1

Terminate read on eos character (reos) flag. Defaults to 0 (false).

-b 0|1

Binary eos character match mode (bin) flag. Defaults to 0 (false).

-x 0|1

Assert EOI when transmitting eos (xeos) flag. Defaults to 0 (false).

-t timeout

Sets the IO timeout for the device. The timeout must be a value from the below table. The default value is 10, corresponding to 300 milliseconds.

timeout	Length
0	Never timeout
1	10 microseconds
2	30 microseconds
3	100 microseconds
4	300 microseconds
5	1 millisecond
6	3 milliseconds
7	10 milliseconds
8	30 milliseconds
9	100 milliseconds
10	300 milliseconds
11	1 second
12	3 seconds
13	10 seconds
14	30 seconds
15	100 seconds
16	300 seconds
17	1000 seconds

-p string

Sets the prompt. Defaults to “ibterm>”

-u string

Send Untalk/Unlisten after each read and write

-f file

Command history file. Defaults to “.ibterm_hist_<primary_address>”

-N

No automatic read on device, enter return at prompt to read.

-X

Force hexadecimal output.

-h

Print help and exit.

NOTES¶

To quit the program enter the EOF character (Ctrl+D) at the prompt.

For interactivity, timeout should not be greater than 13 i.e. 10 secs.

A device read can always be triggered by hitting enter at the prompt. Interrupting the program while reading from the device may cause hangs.

Implementation details¶

The program is implemented as follows:

loop:
	Print prompt to stdout
	Read a line of text from stdin
	Write the text (if any) to the device at pad
	If -N is not set, or no text was entered:


        Attempt to read response from the device


        If no response is received before timeout:


        go to loop


        else:


        print the response on stdout
	Go back to loop.

Source file:	ibterm.1.en.gz (from gpib-user-tools 4.3.7-5)
Source last updated:	2025-11-28T15:52:07Z
Converted to HTML:	2025-11-28T20:59:41Z