Shell Commands

The shell of pico-jxglib is a powerful interactive command-line interface that allows you to interact with your firmware in real-time. It provides a bash-like experience, enabling you to execute various built-in commands for debugging, file management, and more. With the shell, you can easily test and modify the behavior of your firmware without the need for recompilation, making your development process more efficient and enjoyable.

While the shell can work with a variety of devices like USB serial, UART, Wi-Fi (Telnet), OLED display, and more, the most common use case is to use it with a USB serial. In this page, we will use pico-jxgLABO, a firmware platform that uses USB serial for the shell, as an example to demonstrate how to use the shell and its commands.

Setting Up the Terminal

After flashing the pico-jxgLABO, connect the Pico board to your computer using a USB cable. Then, to establish a serial communication, you can use a terminal emulator program such as Tera Term on Windows.

Setup Tera Term for LABOPlatform

From the menu bar, select [File] - [New Connection...] to open the dialog below:

teraterm-new-connection

pico-jxgLABO or a firmware based on LABOPlatform provides two USB serial ports: one for terminal use and the other for applications such as logic analyzers and plotters. Select one of the ports and press Enter key in the terminal. When successfully connected, you will see the prompt in the terminal:

L:/>

Key Operations

The shell provides bash-like key operations to make it easier to enter commands. Below is a list of key operations that you can use in the shell.

Ctrl Key	Single Key	Function
Ctrl + I	TAB	Autocomplete command and file names
Ctrl + P	Up	Show previous history
Ctrl + N	Down	Show next history
Ctrl + B	Left	Move cursor one character left
Ctrl + F	Right	Move cursor one character right
Ctrl + A	Home	Move cursor to the beginning of the line
Ctrl + E	End	Move cursor to the end of the line
Ctrl + D	Delete	Delete the character at the cursor position
Ctrl + H	Back	Delete the character before the cursor
Ctrl + J	Return	Confirm input
Ctrl + K		Delete from cursor to end of line
Ctrl + U		Delete from before cursor to beginning of line

Help Option

Each command is equipped with a help option --help (or -h) that displays the command's detailed usage information.

Example of help option

L:/>cp --help
Usage: cp [OPTION]... SOURCE... DEST
Options:
 -h --help      prints this help
 -r --recursive copies directories recursively
 -v --verbose   prints what is being done
 -f --force     overwrites existing files without prompting