Automatic acquisition of data referenced in user equation

1. A method for manipulating data acquired by an instrument having a set of data acquisition capabilities, the method comprising:

receiving a first equation for manipulating the data acquired by the instrument;

detecting a first operand in the first equation;

recognizing that the first operand corresponds to first data that can be acquired by a first capability from the set of data acquisition capabilities;

configuring the instrument automatically to use the first capability to acquire the first data after recognizing that the first operand corresponds to the first data; and

computing a result of the first equation using the acquired first data.

2. The method as in claim 1 , further comprising:

adding a second operand to the first equation;

recognizing that the second operand corresponds to second data that can be acquired by a second capability from the set of data acquisition capabilities; and

reconfiguring the instrument automatically to further acquire the second data using the second capability.

3. The method as in claim 2 , further comprising:

computing the result for the first equation using the second data in addition to the first data.

4. The method as in claim 1 , further comprising:

deleting the first operand from the first equation; and

reconfiguring the instrument automatically to stop using the first capability.

5. The method as in claim 1 , wherein configuring the instrument to use the first capability to acquire the first data comprises:

associating the operand with a corresponding buffer;

acquiring the first data; and

storing the first data in the corresponding buffer.

6. The method as in claim 5 , further comprising:

displaying the result on a display associated with the instrument.

7. The method as in claim 5 , wherein using the first capability to acquire the first data comprises:

determining whether the first data can be corrected by removing systematic errors; and

removing systematic errors from the first data.

8. The method as in claim 1 , further comprising:

using the result of the first equation in a second equation.

9. The method as in claim 1 , wherein recognizing that the first operand corresponds to first data that can be acquired by a first capability from the set of data acquisition capabilities comprises:

maintaining a list of names corresponding to all data acquisition capabilities supported by the instrument; and

determining that the operand is a member of the list of names.

10. The method as in claim 1 , wherein the first operand comprises a user-defined variable representing an expression, the expression including a reference to the first data that can be acquired by the first capability.

11. The method as in claim 1 , wherein first equation is received through a text entry area in a display associated with the instrument.

12. The method as in claim 1 , further comprising:

displaying a list of the set of data acquisition capabilities in a display associated with the instrument.

13. The method as in claim 1 , wherein the instrument is selected from the group consisting of network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, oscilloscopes, multimeters, voltmeters, power meters, frequency counters, impedance analyzers, signal sources, gas chromatographs, and mass spectrometers.

14. An apparatus, comprising:

a parser for receiving a first equation for manipulating data acquired by an instrument and detecting an operand in the first equation, the instrument having a set of data acquisition capabilities;

a semantic checker for recognizing that the first operand refers to first data that can be acquired by the instrument using a first capability from the set of data acquisition capabilities;

a data manager for configuring the instrument automatically to acquire the first data using the first capability after recognizing that the first operand corresponds to the first data; and

an equation processor for computing a result of the first equation using the acquired first data.

15. The apparatus as in claim 14 , further comprising:

a buffer associated with the operand, wherein the data manager stores the first data acquired by using the first capability.

16. The apparatus as in claim 15 , wherein the data manager comprises:

a control mechanism that determines whether the first data can be corrected by removing systematic errors to create corrected data, and that obtains corrected data when available.

17. The apparatus as in claim 14 , wherein the equation processor automatically recomputes the result of the equation in response to changes to the first data.

18. The apparatus as in claim 14 , wherein the semantic checker checks the operand against a stored list of names corresponding to the set of data acquisition capabilities supported by the instrument.

19. The apparatus as in claim 14 , further comprising:

a display associated with the instrument for displaying the result of the equation, the display comprising a text entry area in which the first equation is entered by a user.

20. The apparatus as in claim 19 , wherein the display displays a list of the set of data acquisition capabilities in the display associated with the instrument.