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Is there a way to use ngspice command line without providing a circuit file? ex: passing the circuit as a string within the command line ?

EDIT

Currently the only way I could use ngspice in command line is by providing an input file.. I could not find an example of using pipe mode though to pass netlist directly via command line without have to use a file to read from.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Isn't there a -p pipe mode for the program? Or do you mean something different? \$\endgroup\$ – jonk Jun 13 '19 at 5:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ can you please provide an example using the -p pipe mode? \$\endgroup\$ – simo Jun 13 '19 at 5:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ I don't use ngspice (or Kicad, which uses ngspice.) But I've heard about the pipe mode perhaps a decade ago. I'm just assuming it's still there. But I've never used it. (There was a problem in ngspice many years ago where outputting anything to a file would cause it to go into file block mode on the input and this made a mess of things. That's where I had heard about the feature. But it was fixed a long time ago, I think. I'm going on vague recollections. But those recollections do suggest to me that you should look into it. There's a manual, I'm sure.) \$\endgroup\$ – jonk Jun 13 '19 at 5:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ Possible duplicate of Running ngspice from command line on a Linux and Windows machine. \$\endgroup\$ – Huisman Jun 13 '19 at 7:08
  • \$\begingroup\$ If I do understand your question, you would like something like: ngspice "voltage divider netlist V1 in 0 1 R1 in out 1k R2 out 0 2k .end" ... How do you get this string in the first place? \$\endgroup\$ – Huisman Jun 13 '19 at 12:27
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As commented before, the Window GUI version of ngspice will not work with pipes due to a Windows specific I/O handling.
Maybe you could try finding a workaround.

I think you should have the GUI write the netlist to a file called e.g. "circuit.cir" and have the code of the GUI execute ngspice circuit.cir.

Another option having the GUI making a string based on the netlist and using a batch file which parses the netlist string, writes it to (e.g.) "circuit.cir" and lastly, executes ngspice circuit.cir.
Make sure you seperate each line of the netlist with a unique character (e.g. ¶ or ­§ or whatever) when making one big string of it.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I don't want to use any GUI, I just want to be able to pass netlist to ngspice without using a file but I have no idea about the pipe mode, can you please share an example of passing netlist using pipe mode? \$\endgroup\$ – simo Jul 10 '19 at 8:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ Any update about this? \$\endgroup\$ – simo Jul 18 '19 at 12:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ @simo I hardly use ngspice. As said it won't work on Windows and I don't have linux. So, I'm afraid I can't help \$\endgroup\$ – Huisman Jul 18 '19 at 12:45
  • \$\begingroup\$ No worries, thank you \$\endgroup\$ – simo Jul 18 '19 at 14:46

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