ecFlowUI has a built-in editor for specifying your own commands if they do not appear in the supplied context menu. Once you have run a new command, it is recorded and will be added automatically to the context menu under Custom. A maximum of the 10 most recently used custom commands will appear here. You can also manage a list of saved commands, which will appear before the Recent commands.

When you select Custom | Manage commands... from the node context menu, the following editor appears in Build command mode:

The Command line is already partially filled in with ecflow_client and <full_name>, and the text cursor positioned between them. Single-clicking on an action from the list brings up its associated help page, while double-clicking on it inserts it into the command line.

Click the Run button to execute the command on the selected nodes. The node selection can be refined before this step by clicking into the Selected Nodes tab and deselecting some nodes from the list.

When the command is run, the placeholders <node_name> and <full_name> are replaced with a space-separated list of the names of the selected nodes so that the command is performed on all the nodes in one go.

Clicking on the Save Options button reveals the panel from which you can save the current command to a list, and clicking on the Saved commands tab switches the editor to the Saved commands tab:

From here, you can do the following:

• save your current command under a new name; the name will be used in the Custom context sub-menu, and the names must be unique
• edit existing saved commands
• duplicate, remove and re-order saved commands
• recall a saved command into the Command edit line to be modified and run

Running shell commands

This system can also be used to run and save arbitrary shell commands. To do this, simply replace 'ecflow_client' with 'sh', followed by the command and any arguments, for example:

sh ls -l

The command will have as its working directory the directory from where ecFlowUI was started. Expressions <node_name> and <full_name> are substituted accordingly. Once the command has run, and output window will appear, from where you can see the stdout and stderr from the command, along with details of and output from the last 20 commands run this session (also available from Tools → Shell command output). This window can be prevented from popping up by using the options in Tools  →  Preferences →  Menus→  Shell commands.