How do I use the Dollar $ in ICM Scripts?

[MolSoft ICM Knowledge Base]

Question:

How do I use the Dollar $ in ICM Scripts?

Answer:

In ICM you need to use '$' ONLY before string variable which contains the name of the OTHER variable or expression. (that different from Perl)

Using dollar in most other cases won't hurt (e.g: $a (where a is an integer variable) but will have no effect and only will make parsing/execution heavier. For example: a = 1 # the two lines below are equivalent print $a print a

Example of dollar usage:

a = 1

s = "a"

print $s   # will print the content of 'a' variable

#

for i=1,10

  s = "a" + i

  $s = i

endfor

Will create a1,a2,...a10 variable with corresponding values.

So you should consider '$' as a substitution of the content of the string variable after it.

build string "AAA"

s = String( a_ )

print s

$s