User Functions for Steering Card Access

In order to add an additional parameter to the steering card, two steps are required. First the parameter has to be initialized before the steering card is read using one of the following routines :

• call SCARINT(bank,identifier,value) for integer parameters
• call SCARREAL(bank,identifier,value) for double precision parameters
• call SCARCHAR(bank,identifier,value) for string parameters

where bank is the four letter bank name, identifier is the one to four character identifier and the value is the default value of the type corresponding to the type of the parameter.

After the steering card has been read, the user can retrieve the current parameter value. To do so, three functions are available :

• value = GCARINT(bank,identifier) for integer parameters
• value = GCARREAL(bank,identifier) for double precision parameters
• value = GCARCHAR(bank,identifier) for string parameters

where bank and identifier correspond to the values given above and value will be the one given in the steering card or the default parameter, if the corresponding bank or identifier in the bank was not set in the steering card. Values and banks may appear more than once in a steering card, but only the last value is stored and can be retrieved.

In principle the get routines could be called each time one of the values is needed, but since this requires several string comparisons, it is rather slow. The recommended procedure is to get the values once and store them in a FORTRAN common block.