From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2009-11-24T15:47:40+09:00
Subject: Re: ideas for a "parameter sweep" program?

Diego Virasoro wrote:
> I often need to run my computational experiments with a combination of
> parameter values, and I was thinking of automatising it with Ruby. Any
> idea on what would be the best way to go about it?

Is the computational experiment written in Ruby? Then wrap it in a 
class, and pass the parameters to your initialize method. This allows 
you to re-use the code in different ways. For example, you can create 
one runner program which takes the parameters from the command line; 
another runner program which repeatedly runs the experiment but sweeping 
across a range of values; and so on.

Even if the experiment is not written in ruby, you can still wrap it in 
a ruby class and call it as an external program using %x{}, system() or 
IO.popen().

> Or maybe should I cook up something with Rake?

rake supports passing (string) parameters as environment variables:
   rake mytest FOO=xyz BAR=456

so a 'rake runner' might look like this:

  require 'experiment'
  task :mytest do
    result = Experiment.new(:foo => ENV['FOO'], :bar => 
ENV['BAR'].to_f).run
    puts result
  end
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