3. Command-line Options

The spreadsheet is normally run using the SS shell script which invokes the C preprocessor (to handle #include and #define directives, and remove comments) and has options related to post-processing for generating HTML and plot output. The ss compiled executable itself has options for debugging and setting the size of the spreadsheet array. The executable can be run directly if pre- and post-processing are not needed.

Both SS and ss support the -h, --help command-line option which displays a usage summary to standard error:

Usage: SS [-H|--HTML|--html] [-T|--Table|--table] [-t|--title title]
  [-Dmacro[=defn]...] [-p|-p2|--plot|--plot2d|-p3|--plot3D] [-x|--xlabel xlabel]
  [-y|--ylabel ylabel] [-z|--zlabel zlabel] [ss options...] [file...]
Usage: ss [-h|--help] [-d|--debug] [-v|--verbose] [--version]
  [-r|--rows #rows] [-c|--cols #cols]

The default number of rows (1000) and columns (702) in the spreadsheet may be overridden using the -r and -c options. The -v or --verbose option displays the row and column index ranges:

% SS -v < /dev/null
ss: rows 0...999, cols 0...701 (A...ZZ)
% SS -c 10000 --verbose < /dev/null
ss: rows 0...999, cols 0...9999 (A...NTP)
%

The -x, -y, -z options set the x, y, z axis labels for plot output. Gnuplot is used to produce plots.

The -T option produces HTML table output without any <html>, <head>, or <body> tags, suitable for embedding in an HTML document.

The -t option sets the title for HTML or plot output.

When producing HTML output, -DHTML=1 is passed to the C preprocessor, so the HTML macro can be used for conditional compilation in your spreadsheet code. Additional macros may be defined using the -D option.