This is the second part of this series of notes on the advanced use of the Unix shell. The first part can be accessed by following the link. In this second part, I will show some advanced examples I wrote for my research activity.

1. CHANGE FILE NAMES SCRIPT

I wrote this script to change the default names of the files generated during a molecular dynamics simulation by the program mdrun in the early version of the GROMACS package for MD simulation. GROMACS is a widely used software package for simulating the behavior of molecules and molecular systems. Although it is now possible to define the root name of the files upon running the simulation program, this script can still be helpful. The script is written in the C Shell (csh) .

 #! /bin/csh -ef
#
# Change the names of the default  output Files
# generated by the program GROMACS mdrun program
#
# (c) Danilo Roccatano
#######
#
#Define the radix of the files name
#
setenv RADIX  'EH_min'

if (-e md.log) then
   if (  -e $RADIX'.log')  then 
     echo Warning $RADIX'.log' exist
   else
     mv md.log            $RADIX'.log'
   endif
else
   echo The md.log file does not exist!
endif

if (-e ener.ene) then
  if (  -e 'e'$RADIX'.ene') then 
   echo Warning 'e'$RADIX'.ene' exist
  else
    mv ener.ene       'e'$RADIX'.ene'
  endif
else
  echo The energy file does not exist
endif

if (-e ctraj.xtc ) then
  if ( -e 'r'$RADIX'.xtc') then 
    echo Warning 'r'$RADIX'.xtc' exist
  else
    mv ctraj.xtc      'r'$RADIX'.xtc'
  endif
else
  echo The compressed trajectory file does not exist
endif

if (-e confout.gro) then
  if ( -e 'x'$RADIX'.gro') then 
    echo Warning 'x'$RADIX'.gro' exist
  else
    mv confout.gro    'x'$RADIX'.gro'
  endif
else
  echo The final configuration file does not exit.
  echo Probably your simulation crashed before the end 
endif
 
exit

In college, before video games, we would amuse our- selves by posing programming exercises. One of the favorites was to write the shortest self-reproducing pro- gram. Since this is an exercise divorced from reality, the usual vehicle was FORTRAN. Actually, FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular.

Ken Thompson, Communications of the ACM. 27 (8), 761–763, 1984.

In December of last year, I celebrated the 30th anniversary of my Laurea in Chemistry dissertation. The starting of my thesis dissertation also signed my acquaintance to one of the grannies of the scientific programming languages, FORTRAN. Since then, I have used and (continue to) this language for my research activity by writing several thousands of lines of code. Therefore, I want to share some of my modest programming achievements using this language.

I will concisely introduce this captivating programming language in a series of articles. This is a primer on a programming language with much more to offer, especially in the new versions starting from the FORTRAN 90. Readers interested in deepening their knowledge in FORTRAN can find online many excellent tutorials and discussion groups, as well as plenty of excellent textbooks that have been written.

The FORTRAN language 

Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) language was introduced in 1957 and remains the language of choice for most scientific programming. The language was constantly restyled and updated (e.g. Fortran IV, Fortran 77). Recent improvements, recently introduced with the Fortran 90 and 95/2003, include several extensions in more modern languages (e.g. in the C language). Some of the most important features of Fortran 90/95 include recursive subroutines, dynamic storage allocation and pointers, user-defined data structures, modules, and the ability to manipulate entire arrays. Fortran 90 is compatible with Fortran 77 but not the other way around. However, the new Fortran language has evolved in a modern computer language by incorporating constructs from other languages.