Since almost nobody likes to type, PyMOL's internal command-line interface includes several "shortcut" features designed to ease the process and reduce typing. If you are a unix user, you will recognize the similarity with features found in tcsh or bash.
If you type the first few characters of a command and then hit TAB, PyMOL will either complete the command or print out a list of which commands match the command.
sel # hitting TAB will produce select
If you hit the TAB key with a blank command line, PyMOL will output a list of all known commands.
When using the "load" command, it can be necessary to type some long paths and filenames. PyMOL makes this process easier by automatically completing unambiguous paths and filenames when you hit the TAB key. For instance,
load cry # hitting TAB will generate load cystal.pdb # if "crystal.pdb" exists in the load cystal.pdb # current working directory
If there is some ambiguity in the filename, PyMOL will complete the name up to the point of ambiguity and then print out the matching files in the directory.
There are a number of fixed string arguments to PyMOL commands. For example, in
show sticks
"sticks" is a fixed string argument to show. Since there is only a small set of such arguments you can pass to show, PyMOL will infer your meaning even if you only provide it with a few letters. For example
show st
works just as well. Note that commands are also inferred in this manner, so
sh st
will currently work just as well, since "show" is the only command starting with "sh".
NOTE: because PyMOL's command language continues to grow and develop, it is important to use full-length commands and string arguments when writing scripts. Otherwise, you can not be sure that a later command or argument will not cause your abbreviation to become ambiguous. For example, "sh st" would be no longer work if a "shutoff" command were added to the PyMOL language.