ppplay

ppplay is the general sequence-file playback tool for PulsePins.

It loads a sequence from a file, converts it into the internal Sequence representation if needed, and streams it through the normal PulsePins playback path.

Current supported formats:

  • vcd
  • PulsePins text sequence format (text)
  • PulsePins binary sequence format (binary)

The binary format is exact and lossless: it preserves the full internal sequence representation, including control-flow elements and the force-trigger flag.

Common options

  • -file PATH: input sequence file to load
  • -format vcd|text|binary: explicitly select the file format
  • -force: force triggering after loading the sequence; for text input this overrides the in-file f flag

Shared playback options such as -check, -read, -timeout, -t, and -dont_wait behave as they do for the other streaming tools. Like the other finite playback commands, ppplay also enforces an internal 10 s streamer-completion timeout after the sequence has been queued.

VCD-specific options

  • -target NAME: VCD signal name to convert; defaults to outs
  • -scale N: output period in ns for each VCD time unit; defaults to 10

These options are only valid for VCD input.

Format selection

If -format is not provided, ppplay tries to infer the format from the file extension:

  • .vcd -> vcd
  • .seq -> text
  • .txt -> text
  • .bin -> binary
  • .ppbin -> binary

If the extension is ambiguous, ppplay exits with an error and asks for -format.

Examples

Replay a waveform from a VCD file:

ppplay -file waveform.vcd

Replay a PulsePins text sequence:

ppplay -file capture.seq

Replay a text sequence with explicit format selection:

ppplay -file capture.txt -format text

Replay a VCD using a specific signal and scale factor:

ppplay -file waveform.vcd -target outs -scale 10

Force playback even when a text file does not request force-triggering:

ppplay -file capture.seq -force

Replay an exact binary sequence capture:

ppplay -file capture.ppbin