The ecFlow pre-processor allows parts of the ecFlow script to be included as is of without being pre-processed. This was done mainly to make it easy to use languages such as perl which make significant use of the %-sign. Pre-processing can be stopped in two ways
By using a pair of lines: %nopp and %end which will completely stop the pre-processing between those lines
By using %includenopp filename which will include the file as is without any interpretation. This makes it easy to test the script separately but allows it to be edited by ecflow_ui.
%nopp echo "char like % can be safely used here" date +%Y.%m.%d %end echo "otherwise we must write" date +%%Y.%%m.%%d