#1554: Want to define constants in parameter files --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Reporter: eschnett | Owner: sbrandt Type: enhancement | Status: assigned Priority: major | Milestone: Component: Cactus | Version: development version Resolution: | Keywords: --------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
Comment (by hinder):
Another option would be to improve the Cactus parameters themselves so that this became easier. For example, you could specify a time interval between outputs, rather than the resolution-dependent iteration number. The time step could be specified as a fraction of a space step, as a Courant factor. With multipatch this is ambiguous, but there is probably a way around that. Alternatively, there could be a global "resolution scaling factor" which automatically rescaled certain quantities for convergence testing.
I don't think the overhead of an rpar file is so much. See http://simfactory.org/info/documentation/userguide/use.html#parameter- file-scripts for an example; it's an additional 8 lines, which is very small in comparison to a typical parameter file. It also doesn't change from one parameter file to the next. And is quoting every $ sign by repeating it so onerous? Is there anything other than $parfile which needs to be quoted? And then you get the benefit of a complete programming language if you need it, and the parameter file as Cactus sees it is still easy to parse by other programs.