<div  id="introduction">
<span id="intro"></span><span id="index-0"></span>
<p>The aim of this tutorial is to go through most of ecFlow functionality by building
a simple suite. Some extension exercises then follow.</p>
<p>Each page will introduce a new notion and provides a list of things to do.
At the bottom of most pages, there is a list of hypertext links that point to
relevant information in the online ECF documentation.</p>
<p>The course is designed in such a way that each student can follow it at their own pace.</p>
<p>ecFlow allows the suite definition to be entered in any language, including plain text,
since there is a defined <a  href="/wiki/display/ECFLOW/Definition+file+Grammar#grammer"><em>Definition file Grammar</em></a>. This grammar does not support conditionals
like (if,while,for) or the ability to define functions. However ecFlow
provides this capability by using <a  href="/wiki/display/ECFLOW/ecFlow+Python+Api#python-api"><em>ecFlow Python Api</em></a></p>
<div >
<p >Note</p>
<p >The following tutorial will show examples in plain text, and python.
However it recommended that you use python, since the later tutorial
examples use conditionals like &#8216;if&#8217; and looping constructs.</p>
</div>
<p>Throughout the course, we use the following typographic conventions:</p>
<ul>
<li><p >The plain text</p>
</li>
<li><p >A new <tt ><span >concept</span></tt></p>
</li>
<li><p >A <tt ><span >file</span></tt> name</p>
</li>
<li><p >A user interface element (i.e. menu, button,...)</p>
</li>
<li><p >invoking a command on a shell will preceded with &gt;:</p>
<div ><pre>&gt; shell command</pre>
</div>
</li>
<li><p >the contents of a file:</p>
<div ><pre>File content, i.e definition file, python, script, or includes files</pre>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>