Key concept -- What is a Prism script?

Automating work with Prism scripts

Because Prism links data to graphs and analyses, a great deal of automation is built in. Simply edit or replace data or info constants, and everything will be updated. Although this built-in automation suffices for day-to-day lab work, it can be tedious when repeated over and over.

You can use a Prism script to automate the analysis of a large number of files, or simulate many data sets for Monte Carlo analyses. Prism's scripting language lets you open and close Prism files, import data, and export or print results and graphs. You can run Prism scripts from within Prism, or launch Prism from another program.

Note that Prism scripts do not tell Prism how to analyze or graph your data. That is built-in to the Prism project (or template). Use a script to import data into an existing project and to specify which results and graphs you want to export or print.

Scripts are small computer programs. Creating a script is slightly more difficult than using Prism. Experience with other scripting or macro languages is helpful, but is certainly not necessary. If you want to launch a Prism script from Excel, you will also need to learn a bit about Excel's macro language, Visual Basic for Applications.

To learn about scripts, first look over the examples we present in the next section. These examples show you the kinds of things that Prism scripts can do and give you a feel for how easy it is. Then read on to learn the details of Prism syntax. The final sections of this chapter explain how you can launch a Prism script from another program.