Turtle Primitives

Turtle Primitives are basic commands that are used by turtle agents. When the procedure calling a primitive is a turtle procedure, every turtle in the simulation will make the same call. For example, if turtles call the back command (back 5), then every turtle moves directly backwards 5 screen units.

Since the 'back' primitive is a movement call, it can only be called by Turtles. Neither patches nor the observer are moving agents. Thus, any use of back is automatically recognized as a Turtle primitive. This is indicated in the command listing (if you click on 'back' under the Turtle Primitives list) by the fact that the entry for 'back' only has the turtle Agent Symbol: i.e., it can only be called by a turtle agent.

For an explanation of how to call a primitive that can be called by different agent types, refer to the Primer on the Welcome page of this Reference Manual.