[A_Pete]

This is maybe a mix of a general UNIX question and an OF problem. During my meshing process, different time directories get created based on the meshing operations. Since they depend on the time step, which is set in the system/controlDict I would like to know how to get the directory of the latest time step into a variable. Since the formats of the time steps can be very different (1e-05, 0.001, etc.) it seems difficult, to compare these. Is there some way I can access the "latestTime" variable, which is used for many different OF tools, in my shell script? I want to do something like this:

sed -i "s/foo/bar/g" $latestTime/constant/polyMesh/boundary

Thanks in advance.

[alexeym]

Hi,

if you'd like to modify boundary dictionary it's easier to use changeDictionary utility (with -latestTime flag). Also you can use -overwrite flag for your mesh operations if you don't need intermediate results.

[floquation]

I do not have a full answer for you, but the following can take care of scientific notation:

$  bubRadius=20e-3
$ 
$   bubRadiusStr=`echo ${bubRadius} | sed -e 's/[eE]+*/\\*10\\^/'` #decode exponential notation into a mathematical string
$   bubRadiusx1=$(echo 1*$bubRadiusStr | bc -l) #floating point math, convert the string into a floating point number

Output:
.02000000000000000000

So if you can loop over all directories, you should be able to find the maximum value somehow.

cd $caseDir
for someDir in *
do
    stuff #$someDir is a file in your case file. It may be a number (timeDir), or e.g. "constant"
done

I hope that can get you started. Remember: Google is your best friend when shell scripting; Or with anything, really.

[A_Pete]

Thanks to both of you for your answers.

@alexeym: The changeDictionary tool might be an option. This is not the only thing I want to change, though. The overwriting option is definately my first choice once I have figured out the correct way to build my mesh and case. So far, I have to keep the intermediate meshes during the "development stage".

@floquation: Yes this is probably what I will use first of all. But I just thought, that there is maybe an OF way to output/access the "latestTime" variable and to then use that in my shell script. I thought that would've been a nicer way to get the maximum time value.

[aendres]

In newer OpenFOAM versions, you can use the foamListTimes function object.


latestTime=$(foamListTimes -latestTime | tail -n 1)