  7.  Input/Output (I/O) Routines

  GENESIS offers several routines to read or write data from within the
  GENESIS environment to an operating system file, or to prompt the user
  for information.

  ______________________________________________________________________
  Routine     Description
  ______________________________________________________________________
  asciidata   Converts a FMT1 formatted binary file to ASCII.
  closefile   Closes an ASCII file opened with the openfile command.
  eof         Tests whether at end of currently opened file.
  flushfile   Flushes buffered data to disk to insure that it gets written.
  input       Obtains input from the user at the GENESIS prompt.
  listfiles   Lists ASCII files currently opened by openfiles command.
  logfile     Activates and deactivates logging of all commands issued in
              a GENESIS session.
  notes       Allows user to enter text notes into a file.
  openfile    Opens ASCII file for reading or writing.
  readfile    Reads a line of data from an opened ASCII file.
  where       Returns name of operating-system directory in which specified
              file is located.
  writefile   Writes out ASCII data to currently opened file.
  ______________________________________________________________________

  7.1.  Saving Simulations to a File

  The simdump command and its auxillary commands are used to dump an
  entire simulation to a GENESIS script file, complete with the current
  values of specified element fields.  This file may then be loaded into
  GENESIS to recreate the simulation.  This is in contrast to the save
  and restore commands, which are used for specified (or wildcarded)
  elements in a simulation.

  ______________________________________________________________________
  Routine          Description
  ______________________________________________________________________
  enddump          Cleans up at the end of a dumpfile
  initdump         Initializes the simulation dumping/undumping system
  msgsubstitute    Allows undump of saved simulation with new message names
  objsubstitute    Allows undump of saved simulation with new object names
  restore          Restores element state stored in file with save routine
  save             Saves current field values for specified element in a file
  simdump          Dumps an entire simulation to a GENESIS script file
  simobjdump       Sets up format for dumping/reading objects to a file
  simundump        Creates an element and assigns values to its fields
  substituteinfo   Lists substitutions from msgsubstitute/objsubstitute
  swapdump         Mirrors initialization data when doing simulation dumps
  ______________________________________________________________________

  7.2.  Related GENESIS Objects

  Often, one would like to write or read data at regular intervals,
  using one of the available simulation clocks.  The GENESIS objects
  asc_file, disk_out, and disk_in may be used for this purpose.  The
  diskio, variable, and metadata objects provide the features of the
  existing disk_in and disk_out objects to read and write data in the
  portable binary NETCDF format.  This eases the interfacing of GENESIS
  simulations with popular analysis and signal-processing tools such as
  MATLAB, and makes it possible to use binary files produced by GENESIS
  on multiple platforms.  For examples of ``clocked file I/O'', see the
  documentation for these objects in the ``GENESIS Object Reference''.

  The event_tofile and spikehistory objects are useful for recording
  spike event times to a file.
