Technical data

Command Separators
The SCPI command structure is hierarchical and is governed by commas,
semicolons and colons:
• Commas are used to separate parameters in one command.
• Colons are used to separate levels.
• Semicolons are used to send more than one command to the instrument at a
time.
SENSe[1]:PATTern:UPATtern<n>:IDATa [A|B,]
<start_bit>, <length_in_bits>, <block_data>
Note that the command hierarchy is indicated by colons and that the parameters
(beginning with [A|B,]), are separated by commas.
It is possible to send several commands in one pass, as long as the commands all
belong to the same node in the SCPI tree. The commands have to be separated by
semicolons.
The following SCPI commands provide examples of this. Note that the optional
characters and keywords have been removed.
SOURce1:VOLTage:LEVel:IMMediate:OFFSet 1.5
SOURce1:VOLTage:LEVel:IMMediate:AMPLitude 2
These commands can also be sent as follows:
VOLT:OFFS 1.5; AMPL 2.0
SCPI Command Structure Example
The SCPI command structure can be best examined by means of an example. For
example, the command to select the pattern generator's pattern is:
[SOURce[1]]:PATTern[:SELect] PRBS7
The structure of this command can be illustrated as follows:
[SOURce [1]:] This is the top layer of the command
structure and identifies the pattern
generator source subsystem.
PATTern This is the next layer and defines
subnode for setting up the pattern.
[:SELect] This is the command itself, and is the
equivalent of setting the front panel
pattern selection field.
SCPI Command Language 4
Agilent J-BERT N4903B High-Performance Serial BERT 85
Multiple Commands