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B.5.3 Driver definitions

Driver definitions are the ultimate purpose of the devices configuration file. These are where the real action is. Driver definitions tell PSPP where it should send its output.

Each driver definition line is divided into four fields. These fields are delimited by colons (:). Each line is subjected to environment variable interpolation before it is processed further (see Environment substitutions). From left to right, the four fields are, in brief:

driver name
A unique identifier, used to determine whether to enable the driver.
class name
One of the predefined driver classes supported by PSPP. The currently supported driver classes include `postscript' and `ascii'.
device type(s)
Zero or more of the following keywords, delimited by spaces:
screen
Indicates that the device is a screen display. This may reduce the amount of buffering done by the driver, to make interactive use more convenient.
printer
Indicates that the device is a printer.
listing
Indicates that the device is a listing file.

These options are just hints to PSPP and do not cause the output to be directed to the screen, or to the printer, or to a listing file—those must be set elsewhere in the options. They are used primarily to decide which devices should be enabled at any given time. See SET, for more information.

options
An optional set of options to pass to the driver itself. The exact format for the options varies among drivers.

The driver is enabled if:

  1. Its driver name is specified on the command line, or
  2. It's in a category specified on the command line, or
  3. If no categories or driver names are specified on the command line, it is in category default.

For more information on driver names, see Driver categories.

The class name must be one of those supported by PSPP. The classes supported depend on the options with which PSPP was compiled. See later sections in this chapter for descriptions of the available driver classes.

Options are dependent on the driver. See the driver descriptions for details.