American Chemical Society
Finding and Verifying CAS Registry Numbers® on STN®
— March 1993 —
The Basic Messenger Commands
There are 27 Messenger commands available. Please refer to the manual STN International: A Guide to Commands and Databases for details on the commands covered in this booklet and the other available commands. To get started, you can do simple online searching with four basic commands:
- FILE — Enter a file.
- EXPAND — Look up a search term in an online index.
- SEARCH — Search the file for records with certain search terms, i.e., a chemical name.
- DISPLAY — Show the records retrieved by the search or view record with a specific Registry Number.
Most commands have a novice and an expert version. For the novice version, type only the full command name with no other information; the system will prompt you for the necessary information. For the expert version, you type the abbreviated command name and the necessary information.
FILE Command
The FILE command tells the system the name of the file you want to search. We will discuss only two of the many files available on STN. For your Registry Number searches, use the REGISTRY File. Use the LREGISTRY File for practicing Messenger commands. You may switch from one file to the other by simply typing FILE followed by the name of the next file at any arrow prompt, e.g., => FILE REGISTRY. When you enter a file, the system automatically shows you some current information about the file.
=> FILE REGISTRY COST IN U.S. DOLLARS SINCE FILE TOTAL ENTRY SESSION FULL ESTIMATED COST 0.15 0.15 FILE ‘REGISTRY’ ENTERED AT 13:59:49 ON 10 FEB 93 USE IS SUBJECT TO THE TERMS OF YOUR CUSTOMER AGREEMENT COPYRIGHT (C) 1993 American Chemical Society (ACS) STRUCTURE FILE UPDATES: 05 FEB 93 HIGHEST RN 145772-59-4 DICTIONARY FILE UPDATES: 09 FEB 93 HIGHEST RN 145772-59-4
We will describe EXPAND, SEARCH, and DISPLAY in the following section, Searching with a Name.