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I am running NEURON on a MSWin box and for some reason I can't use load_template but I can use xopen to load the file. As a result, I have come to the realization that I do not really understand the difference between the two commands. Is there an operational difference and if so what is the distinction?

I will assume that you have already looked these up in the Programmer's
Reference. If not, by all means do so. Since you're using MSWin, it's on
your PC; click on Documentation in the NEURON program group, then
look in the alphabetical listing.

Now my own comments.

About the only place you'll encounter load_template is in legacy code.
MSWin doesn't handle load_template or load_proc well at all, so in the
interests of cross-platform compatibility, it is best to avoid using either
of these statements when writing new code. If you want something
from NEURON's standard run library, just load the whole thing with
load_file("nrngui.hoc"), or, if you don't want to see the NEURON Main
Menu toolbar, load_file("noload.hoc")