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4.2 Configuration files ¶

Each program needs a certain number of parameters to run. Supplying all the necessary parameters each time you run the program is very frustrating and prone to errors. Therefore all the programs read the values for the necessary options you have not given in the command-line from one of several plain text files (which you can view and edit with any text editor). These files are known as configuration files and are usually kept in a directory named etc/ according to the file system hierarchy standard¹²⁰.

The thing to have in mind is that none of the programs in Gnuastro keep any internal default value. All the values must either be stored in one of the configuration files or explicitly called in the command-line. In case the necessary parameters are not given through any of these methods, the program will print a missing option error and abort. The only exception to this is --numthreads, whose default value is determined at run-time using the number of threads available to your system, see Multi-threaded operations. Of course, you can still provide a default value for the number of threads at any of the levels below, but if you do not, the program will not abort. Also note that through automatic output name generation, the value to the --output option is also not mandatory on the command-line or in the configuration files for all programs which do not rely on that value as an input¹²¹, see Automatic output.

• Configuration file format
• Configuration file precedence
• Current directory and User wide
• System wide