SHMIDCAT(1)

✨ SHMIDCAT — the manual, but make it a vibe ✨

okay bestie so this is shmidcat, a lil utility from the Shared Memory Trampoline corner of the gtkwave(1) universe 💖

🎀 NAME 🎀

shmidcat — copies stdin or a file into a shared memory block for gtkwave(1) 💫

🌸 SYNTAX 🌸

shmidcat [VCDFILE]

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

So here's the tea 🫖 — shmidcat takes either the file you hand it on the command line or stdin (that's the fallback when you don't name a file, no shame in it) and copies it line by line into a shared memory block. lowkey iconic behaviour honestly.

and then?? stdout gets a shared memory ID dropped into it, which you're supposed to pass along to gtkwave(1). it's giving relay race 🏃♀️✨

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

🦋 the classic way 🦋

to run this program the standard way, you type:

cat whatever.vcd | shmidcat

and the shared memory ID is emitted to stdout. periodt 💅

🍓 the glow-up way 🍓

shmidcat whatever.vcd | gtkwave -v -I whatever.sav

here GTKWave just directly grabs the ID from stdin — no middleman, no drama, obsessed 😭👑

⭐ LIMITATIONS ⭐

okay real talk time, bestie 🙈

this program is mainly for illustrative and testing purposes only. like, it's not out here trying to be your main character for production work, yk?

its primary use is for people who wanna write interactive VCD dumpers for gtkwave(1) — because its source code may be examined, particularly the emit_string() function 👀 (go look at it, fr fr, it's the whole point).

it can also be used to test whether an existing VCD file will load properly in interactive mode ✅

and — bonus — note that it can also be used to redirect VCD files which are written into a pipe to gtkwave(1) in a non-blocking fashion 🔥

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Anthony Bybell <bybell@rocketmail.com> — the legend, the moment, the whole entire vibe 💖

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

• gtkwave(1)

and that's a wrap, my love 🫶 this lil page came to you courtesy of Anthony Bybell, version 3.0.8 of the manual — go forth and pipe your VCDs, bestie, you got this 💅✨🎀