The  "Command Pad" is basically a  'private' clipboard with the reserved name of CMDPAD. It's purpose is to hold a series of Keyboard commands that can be quickly used as a Keyboard Macro.


Often there is a need to record and 'play back' a series of KB commands, but there is no long term need for the commands.  So the normal procedure of doing a Keyboard (Record) function, then going in to KEYMAP to assign the sequence to a specific key-code, and then later to perhaps remove the KB assignment, is just "too much bother".


CMDPAD is designed to make that process quick and simple.


Note: For simple, one-off command repeating see RETRIEVE and the & command prefix.


How was this accomplished?


  1. The KB primitive (Record) can now specify a private clipboard name as an operand.  e.g. (Record/cb-name)



  1. For CMDPAD, this would be (Record/CMDPAD).  When recording is complete, the recorded string will be immediately available in the CMDPAD.CLIP file.



  1. A new KB primitive is now available - (CmdPad) - which will inject the contents of the CMDPAD.CLIP file into the keyboard command stream.



  1. Assuming the following keyboard definitions (suggested assignments only) :


       Key                  Assignment


SCRLK        - (Record/CMDPAD)

       KPENTER        - (CmdPad)

A-KPENTER        - CLIP CMDPAD

S-KPENTER        - CUT ALL REP CMDPAD



    • You can record a KB sequence by pressing SCRLK, typing the sequence, and then pressing SCRLK a 2nd time.
    • You can then immediately 'play back' the sequence by pressing KPENTER.
    • You can edit the current CMDPAD contents by pressing Alt-KPENTER
    • You can copy the data from any other Edit session by pressing Shft-KPENTER 



  1. When (Record) places a recording into CMDPAD, it does so as one long string. This is designed that way as in the past a recording was typically copied to a KEYPAD key definition, so it had to be a single line. When placed in a CMDPAD and edited, this is most unfriendly.  SPFLite has included a macro in it's distribution which will expand the single line string into individual lines. The macro is called CmdPadSplit.