Program option sets

A set of values can be specified for options of any data type that are not excluded from set specifications (see note above).

Option value sets are specified by:

--option-name set-specifier

where set-specifier is defined as:

set-identifier[value₁ ,value₂ ,value₃ , ... ,value_n]

and

set-identifier	is one of {’s’, ’set’} (case is not significant)
valuei	is a value for the option

Note that:

set-identifier is mandatory for set-specifier.
value_i must be the same data type as option-name.

There should be no spaces inside the brackets ([]). Spaces on the command line are interpreted as argument delimiters by the shell parser before passing the command-line arguments to the COMPAS executable, so if spaces are present inside the brackets the shell parser breaks the set specification into multiple command-line arguments.

Valid values for boolean options are {1|0, TRUE|FALSE, YES|NO, ON|OFF}, and all set values must be of the same type (i.e. all 1|0, or all YES|NO etc.).

There is no limit to the number of values specified for a set, values can be repeated, and neither order nor case is significant.

To specify a set of values for the --eccentricity-distribution option, a user, if running COMPAS from the command line and with no grid file, would type any of the following:

./COMPAS --eccentricity-distribution s[THERMALISED,FIXED,FLAT]

./COMPAS --eccentricity-distribution set[THERMALISED,FIXED,FLAT]

In each of the examples above the user has specified, by the use of the set-specifier, that three binary stars should be evolved, using the eccentricity distributions ’THERMALISED’, ’FIXED’, and ’FLAT’.

Note that when a set is, or sets are, specified on the command line, the --number-of-systems command-line option is ignored. This is to avoid multiple systems with identical initial values being evolved. Ranges and sets can be mixed with grid files, and in that case ranges and sets specified on the command line will be played out for each grid file line.