Other Macro Commands

Outputting Error Messages (ERROR)

The ERROR command outputs a diagnostic message to the listing file. Two forms of ERROR command syntax are available, to output user-defined and standard error messages, as follows:

The “severity” form of the ERROR command is used to output a user defined error. The diagnostic message severity must be a whole number in the range 0-99, where by standard convention: 0 is a message, 4 a warning, 8 an error and 16 a severe error. The diagnostic message text follows the severity. See the “Output String Format” for a description of how the string to be written is constructed using the format string argument and the optional list of parameters.

For example:

ERROR/0,'Pallet change'
ERROR/4,'Cannot determine diameter of tool !(\*)',$T

The “error number” form of the ERROR command is used to output standard error diagnostics. The diagnostic error-number must be a whole number greater than 99, matching one of the standard diagnostics found in the cer270.err file (see “Error File”). Some standard diagnostics include “!(…)” output string format descriptors. The ERROR command must include a text or numeric parameter (as appropriate) for each such descriptor.

ERROR/2009001
ERROR/2007001,'XYPLAN'

Calling other programs (SYSTEM)

The SYSTEM command is used to spawn processes from within the control emulator. The SYSTEM command allows the macro processor to run another program or issue an operating system command from within a macro. The command takes the form:

The command string is sent to the Windows command shell, relative to the current working directory. If the command name and/or file name specifications contain embedded blanks, they must be enclosed in quotes as they would if typed in the command shell. Executable files in the File Storage section can be run using an “//ICAMFS/” path for the file name.

The $ERRNO system variable contains the status code returned by the operating system when control was returned to the macro processor.