Find and add PVs

Search the archiver

Press /, or click the search box at the left of the bar, and type part of a name. After a short pause the box lists the archiver's matching PVs:

• The first match is highlighted: ↑/↓ move through the list, Enter adds the highlighted row, and a click adds the one clicked.
• A PV whose name is exactly what you typed is always the first match, so typing a full name and pressing Enter adds that PV, even when other names containing it sort before it.
• Adding a PV keeps the text and the list, so you can add several from one search: ↓, Enter, ↓, Enter, ... PVs already on the plot are dimmed with a ✓, and picking one again does nothing.
• Esc closes the list and keeps the text (↓ or a click brings the list back); a second Esc, or the ✕ in the box, clears it. A click elsewhere closes the list and keeps the text.
• Coming back to the box (a click, or /) selects its text, so typing starts a new search; press → or End to edit the old one instead.

Text without * or ? is searched as a substring, ignoring case. With * or ? it is a glob: it must match the whole name, case and all, and every other character stands for itself.

Click the .* toggle inside the box to type a Java regular expression instead. It must match the whole name: SR-DI matches nothing, while SR-DI.* works. Start it with (?i) to ignore case.

The list shows the first 50 matches; type more of the name to narrow it.

Reuse a recent search

archiveview remembers a search once you add a PV from it (typos and half-typed names are not kept), with its .* setting. It keeps the last 50, in history.json in the config directory, so they survive a restart. Plain text that differs only in case (bl16i, BL16I) is one search, kept as you last typed it.

• Click the empty box, or press /: the list shows your recent searches under Recent. Pick one with ↓ and Enter, or a click, to put it back in the box and search again. Nothing is added until you pick a match.
• While typing: recent searches that start with (or contain) the text come first, marked with a clock, above the archiver's matches. Enter still adds the first match; move up to a recent search to use it. So typing BL16I offers BL16I-EA-* from yesterday.
• Hover a recent search and click its ✕ to forget it, or choose Clear search history in the ≡ menu to forget them all.

Add a PV the archiver doesn't know

Type the full name: as well as any archived matches, the list ends with an Add "…" as typed row. Highlight it with ↓ (or click it) and press Enter. The text is added as written, so this is how to add a PV that is not archived; it plots live only. A PV Access or simulated name (pva://name, sim://sine), or several names separated by spaces or commas, can only be added as typed, so that row comes first and Enter adds it straight away.

Add PVs from another window

Select a PV name anywhere, then middle-click the plot or its legend: the PV is added, and a note at the bottom says so. This is the X11 and Wayland primary selection, the way EDM and MEDM pass PV names around:

• In bobview, middle-click a widget to select its PV name.
• In a terminal, an editor or a web page, select the name with the mouse (double-click selects a whole name in most terminals).

Several names separated by spaces, commas, semicolons or new lines add several PVs. Quotes and brackets around a name are dropped, as are those around a list ((SR:X, SR:Y)). A word can be a PV name if, after an optional ca:// or pva://, it has only the characters EPICS record names use (letters, digits, _ - + : [ ] < > { } $, and . before a field, as in BL01T:X.VAL) and at least one letter. Numbers, times and dates (12:30:00, 2026-10-17T13:41:52Z), host:port (localhost:5064, ioc.example.org:5075), a::b, Python log lines among other words (INFO:root:Connected), URLs, command-line flags (-a) and words ending in . or : are left out. Numbered names such as SR:BPM:01 and DLS:01 are names, and a ca:// or pva:// name is always taken as it is.

bobview's local and simulated PVs are names too: loc://foo, loc://x<VLong>(7), sim://ramp, sim://sine(0, 10, 0.1) (the commas and spaces inside the brackets do not split it). A sim:// name must be one of bobview's simulations: sine, sawtooth, ramp, noise, gaussianNoise, flipflop or const. No archiver has them, so they are plotted live only. Formulas (=…, eq://…) are not taken from a selection; add them from bobview with right-click → Trend.

• A single word is added if it can be a name, so names with no structure at all (TEMP1, BEAMCURRENT) work: double-click one in a terminal and middle-click.
• Several words add only those with a scheme or some structure: a :, -, _, braces, a digit or a .FIELD. So a line of prose, a shell command or code selected with the names adds just the names ($ caget -a SR:X adds SR:X).

If nothing is left, the note says so.

One paste adds at most 20 PVs. If the selection names more (most likely a screenful selected by accident), nothing is added and the note says how many it named; select fewer.

Middle-click in the search box pastes the selection there instead, where you click, so you can edit it or search with it. Text you select in the search box becomes the primary selection, so you can middle-click it into a terminal (the box selecting all its text when you click into it doesn't count).

Ctrl+V with the pointer over the plot (and the search box not focused) adds the PVs in the clipboard, on every platform. Where there is no primary selection at all (macOS, Windows, a Wayland desktop without the protocol), middle-click uses the clipboard instead. With nothing selected it adds nothing, rather than something copied long ago.

The selection is read in the background. If the application that owns it doesn't answer within 2 seconds, the note says it could not be read.

Over ssh -X the selection goes through your X server, so selecting a name in a local window and middle-clicking the remote archiveview works.

Add PVs from the command line

Name them after the options:

archiveview --archiver http://archiver:17668 SR-DI-DCCT-01:SIGNAL SR-DI-DCCT-01:LIFETIME

Globs are not expanded on the command line; each argument is one PV.

Remove or hide a PV

Each PV has a chip along the bottom of the plot. Click a chip to hide its trace (the dot turns hollow) and again to show it. Hover a chip to highlight its trace: it is drawn bolder and on top, with its min/max band, while the others dim. That finds a trace hidden under another with the same values, or under the bands of busy PVs. Click its ✕ to remove it.

With no archiver

Without an archiver, there is nothing to search: the only row is Add "…" as typed, so type full names and press Enter.