The sedflux key-value file

Many of the (ASCII) input files for sedflux are of a common format. I’ll often refer to them as sedflux key-files. They are plain text files that define a series of groups. Each group contains a series of key-value pairs. A group begins with its name surrounded by square brackets and ends at the begining of the next group.

The key-value pairs follow, one per line. They consist of a parameter name (or key), followed by a colon and then the value. As an example, a valid group looks like,

[ global ]
vertical resolution (m):   0.05
x resolution (m):          10000
y resolution (m):          100

In this example, we’ve defined a group called global. For this group, we’ve set the values for three parameters. There can be any number of groups or key-value pairs per file. In fact, the same group name can appear in the same file more than once. The data are not overwritten but a new instance of the group created. However, in some instances it may not make sense to have multiple occurances of a group.

Examples of sedflux input files that are key-value files:

• Sediment description file
• River conditions
• Initialization file