/* PSIDOC InputNg_Intro \section{Lesson I: InputNg} In this lesson we'll learn how to read a properly formatted input file. This way when you write your own C++ programs you'll have an already available way to read parameters from an input file and use them in your program. You can go ahead an compile this example with \begin{tiny} \begin{verbatim} g++ testInputNg.cpp -std=c++11 -Wall -I ../src/ -I.. -DUSE_BOOST -L ../lib -lpsimaglite -o testInputNg \end{verbatim} \end{tiny} Note that you need boost-dev or boost-devel and also you must have lib/libsimaglite.a already compiled. You can already go ahead an run it with the provided simple input \begin{verbatim} ./testInputNg testInput.ain \end{verbatim} What does this program do? It reads two or three ``labels'' from testInput.ain and prints some of them to the terminal. The labels have the form \texttt{label=value}, and we have a scalar, a vector, and a string as examples. So, now let's discuss the short program we have here. First, note that we need two includes from PsimagLite. PsimagLite files are usually under src, but in some cases subdirectories are used. Here are the includes. \begin{lstlisting} PSIDOC_CONTINUE */ #include "InputNg.h" #include "InputCheckBase.h" /* PSIDOC_RESUME \end{lstlisting} InputNg has an option to check the inputs, so that you can define the labels that you expect to find in your program. This is optional but recommended. For this we create a class, say \texttt{MyInputCheck}, and derive it from PsimagLite's \texttt{InputCheckBase}. This inheritance isn't needed, but save us from having to provide all functions, as the base class implements defaults. For a more realistic use case you can check DMRG++'s InputCheck.h under dmrgpp/src/Engine. For now, here's our short input checking class. \begin{lstlisting} PSIDOCCOPY InputNg_Class_MyInputCheck \end{lstlisting} In our example, we are defining a scalar called myscalar, a vector called myvector, and a string called mystring. This is what we expect to read from the input file, even though the writer of the input may add other labels. */ /* PSIDOC_CODE_START InputNg_Class_MyInputCheck nocapture */ class MyInputCheck : public PsimagLite::InputCheckBase { public: std::string import() const { std::string str("integer myscalar;\n"); str += "vector myvector;\n"; str += "string mystring;\n"; return str; } }; /* PSIDOC_CODE_END */ /* PSIDOC InputNg_main1 Now for the actual reading of the input file, we'll use \cppFile{InputNg}. We'll alias its type first with \begin{verbatim} typedef PsimagLite::InputNg InputNgType; \end{verbatim} InputNg expects one template argument, our input checking class, which we have just described. We'll also have to use the actual name provided to this program, which should be in \verb!argv[1]!, which we put in C++ variable \texttt{filename}. We need to create an object of our class MyInputCheck as well. We then have the following code so far \begin{lstlisting} PSIDOCCOPY InputNg_main_part1 \end{lstlisting} */ /* PSIDOC_CODE_START InputNg_main_part1 nocapture */ int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { if (argc != 2) { std::cerr<<"USAGE "< InputNgType; std::string filename(argv[1]); MyInputCheck myInputCheck; /* PSIDOC_CODE_END */ /* PSIDOC InputNg_main2 We are now ready to read the file, which we do with the following two statements \begin{lstlisting} PSIDOCCOPY InputNg_main_part2 \end{lstlisting} From now on, we can forget about the myInputCheck object, and the ioWriteable object as well, and consider only the io object, which we will use to read labels. The data from the file is now in memory, and the file does not have to be read or even present anymore. */ /* PSIDOC_CODE_START InputNg_main_part2 nocapture */ InputNgType::Writeable ioWriteable(filename, myInputCheck); InputNgType::Readable io(ioWriteable); /* PSIDOC_CODE_END */ /* PSIDOC InputNg_main3 Let's now read some data from the file using the io object. (The data is now in memory, and it is \emph{not actually} read from the file, but we will use that terminology anyway.) We read the scalar first, and print it to the terminal with the following code. \begin{lstlisting} PSIDOCCOPY InputNg_code_main3 \end{lstlisting} The first argument to io.readline will be filled with the value from the file that follows the label myscalar. Even though the value will be filled, it's best practice to initialize it first anyway. */ /* PSIDOC_CODE_START InputNg_code_main3 nocapture */ int myscalar = 0; io.readline(myscalar, "myscalar="); std::cout<<"I've read label myscalar with value "; std::cout< v; io.read(v, "myvector"); /* PSIDOC_CODE_END */ /* PSIDOC InputNg_main5 The two previous examples required the labels to be present in the input file. But what if we want to have an \emph{optional} label in the input file? To deal with that we put the io.readline statement inside a try and catch block, as follows. \begin{lstlisting} PSIDOCCOPY InputNg_code_main5 \end{lstlisting} This way if the user provides the label mystring then the C++ variable mystr will have the value the user provided. Otherwise, the value of mystr will remain ``default'', and no error will be issued. */ /* PSIDOC_CODE_START InputNg_code_main5 nocapture */ std::string mystr("default"); try { io.readline(mystr, "mystring="); } catch (std::exception&) {} } /* PSIDOC_CODE_END */ /* PSIDOC InputNg_Recap \subsection*{Recap} In this lesson we have learned, blah blah. \subsection*{Exercises} */