High-level overview & concepts

Parameter definition files

A parameter definition file is a CSV text file where each line defines a parameter. A parameter has a type, a name, a default values, and optionally, a description. To add documentation, comments can be added to the definition file. The types are specific to the target language, e.g., an integer would be denoted by int for C/C++, and by integer for Fortran 90. The supported types are documented for each implemented target language.

By way of illustration, a parameter definition file is given below for C as a target language, additional examples are shown in the target language specific sections:

int,numParticles,1000,number of particles in the system
double,temperature,273,system temperature in Kelvin
char*,intMethod,'newton',integration method to use

Note that this parameter definition file should be viewed as an integral part of the source code.

Code generation

ParameterWeaver will generate code to

• initialize the parameter varaibles to the default values as specified in the parameter definition file;
• parse the actual command line arguments at runtime to determine the user specified values, and
• optionally, parse a configuration file;
• print the values of the parameters to an output stream.

The implementation and features of the resulting code fragments are specific to the target language, and try to be as close as possible to the idioms of that language. Again, this is documented for each target language specifically. The nature and number of these code fragments varies from one target language to the other, again trying to match the language's idioms as closely as possible. For C/C++, a declaration file (.h) and a definition file (.c), as well as a source and header file containing definitions and declarations of auxillary functions. For Fortran 90, a single file (.f90) will be generated that contains both declarations and definitions.