User functions

For standard data analysis a large number of specially tailored functions called “user functions” have been implemented. These are accessible from the relax prompt by simply typing the name of the function. An example is help(). An alphabetical listing of all accessible user functions together with full descriptions is presented later in this manual.

A few special objects which are available within the prompt are not actually functions. These objects do not require brackets at their end for them to function. For example to exit relax type

[numbers=none]
relax> exit

Another special object is that of the function class. This object is simply a container which holds a number of user functions. You can access the user function within the class by typing the name of the class, then a dot “.”, followed by the name of the user function. An example is the user function for reading relaxation data out of a file and loading the data into relax. The function is called “read” and the class is called “relax_data”. To execute the function, type something like

[numbers=none]
relax> relax_data.read(ri_id='R1_600',  ri_type='R1',  frq=600.0*1e6, file='r1.600.out', res_num_col=1, data_col=3, error_col=4)

On first usage the relax prompt can be quite daunting. Two features exist to increase the usability of the prompt - the help system and tab completion.