Input and Output Files

The capability of GENESIS 1.3 can widely be extended by additional input and output files. In total GENESIS 1.3 depends on up to 14 files including such files containing the magnetic field or a sample phase space distribution of the electron beam.

For all runs the main input file is mandatory. It contains the vast majority of the information needed to run the simulation. Besides the main output file, which is always created, the main input files defines, whether additional input and output files are read or written. All output files except for the magnetic output file, uses the filename of the main output file as the root for their filenames and appends a three letter filename extension. Input files can have independent filenames, which are defined in the main input. The main output file and the magnetic input and output files are not needed to be specified in the input file. GENESIS prompts for the name if necessary.

Genesis 1.3 has support for different file formats, depending on the programming language and built of the executable. The original file format is always supported. Input files are automatically checked for file formats, which are supported by the executable. If GENESIS 1.3 cannot identify any special format, it assumes the original file format and starts processing the file. The file format of output files are set by the input parameter FILETYPE. Request for unsupported file formats will cause an error message and the termination of GENESIS 1.3

Besides the principle support of a specific file format, certain input and output files are not suitable for all file formats. The following table lists all files and the implicit support for them. The last column is the default filetype of output files for the C++ version of Genesis if the filetype is not explicitly defined. If that file format is not supported GENESIS 1.3 falls back to the original file format as default. The FORTRAN default is the original format for all output files.

It is strongly recommended that the original file format is not used, because it is of all formats the least platform-independent format. Also if more than one record of the electron or field distribution is written, the SDDS and HDF5 file formats yield much smaller file sizes. The XML output is always ASCII and the base64 encoding is not supported.

In the following all individual file are described for the original file format. All other file formats share the same content of information as the original but might have also additional information for more self-consistent sets of data files. The differnece and addition for the other file formats are explained in the last sections of this chapter.

• The Main Input File
• The Main Output File
• The Radiation and Particle Output File
• The Log File
• Reading-in and Dumping the Particle and Radiation Distribution
• The Magnet Description Input and Output File
• The Beam Description File
• The Radiation Description File
• The External Distribution File
• The Time-Record File
• The SDDS File Format
• The XML File Format
• The HDF5 File Format