When a macro is executed, AutoCAD places a space at the end of the macro before processing the command sequence.
AutoCAD processes the following menu macro as though you had entered line Spacebar.
line
Sometimes this is undesirable; for example, the TEXT or DIM command must be terminated by Enter, not by a space. Also, it sometimes takes more than one space (or Enter) to complete a command, but some text editors don't let you create a line with trailing blanks. Two special conventions get around these problems.
Look at the following macro:
erase \;
If this item simply ended with the backslash (which indicates user input), it would fail to complete the ERASE operation, because AutoCAD does not add a blank after the backslash. Therefore, this macro uses a semicolon (;) to force an Enter after the user input. Here are more examples:
ucs ucs ; text \.4 0 DRAFT Inc;;;Main St.;;;City, State;
Selecting the first macro enters ucs and Spacebar at the Command prompt, and the following prompt appears:
Specify origin of UCS or [Face/NAmed/OBject/Previous/View/World/X/Y/Z/ZAxis] <World>:
Selecting the second macro enters ucs, Spacebar, and semicolon (;) at the Command prompt, which accepts the default value, World. No difference between the first and second item would be evident on the screen; naturally, you would not put both on the same menu.
Selecting the third macro displays a prompt for a starting point and then draws the address on three lines. In the triple-semicolon (;;;), the first semicolon ends the text string, the second causes repetition of the TEXT command, and the third calls for the default placement below the previous line.