This library defines parameter parsing for a program. The parameters can be either given in the arguments to a program, or in a parameter file, which file name is passed to the program as an argument.

The parameters are defined as pairs, such as name=value

• If passed in arguments to the program, it has to be preceeded by –, i.e., –name=value
  • In this case, no spaces can occur in this pair.
• If defined in a parameter file, DO NOT prepend – to the pair.
  • In this case, you can put spaces any where
  • lines starting with # are comment lines, these lines will be ignored
  • empty lines are ignored
• If the same parameter name appeared more than once, the last occurrence will take effect.
  • This can be used to override parameters defined in a parameter file by passing the same parameter name with a different value in an argument after the parameter file name.

The base class for all parameters is Argument, which basically does the following:

• holds the name of the parameter,
• use the to check if a pair can be parsed,
• defines a help message,
• holds the information whether a parameter is required or optional.

It Its subclassed defines parameters of various types. The defined subclasses include

• IntArgument, representing an integer
• FloatArgument, representing a float number
• StringArgument, representing a string
• BoolArgument, represent a boolean value, i.e., yes/no
• DistributionArgument, representing a SimDistribution

Files

• The definitions parameters.h
• The implementation parameters.cpp