autosave

Automatically save running results of your disposable code.

Unlike software engineers, scientists use computers as their experiment tools and write codes for scientific computation and simulation. A tool that helps them record the computation results is thus necessary:

• The codes are often disposable and no need for branching, rebase, merging or other Git operations. So code management tools such as Git may seem too professional for them.
• The codes are often saved along with the running results, such as data/variables and figures.
• The codes are often run for multiple times with changed parameters. It is necessary to record the code/parameter and their corresponding running results.

autosave is such a tool.

Currently supported language: Matlab, Python.

For Matlab

Use begin.m and over.m. Typically, begin.m and over.m are the first and last line of your code, respectively (apart from comments and subfunctions).

A simple example:

begin on;
omega = 1;

x = linspace(-pi,pi,100);
y = sin(omega.*x);
z = cos(omega.*x);

figure;
plot(x,y);

figure;
plot(x,z);

over;

Save the code as Trial.m and run it, you will find three new files in the same directory of Trial.m: Trial_run1.mat, Trial_run1_fig1.fig, and Trial_run1_fig2.fig. Clear your workspace and load Trial_run1.mat, you will find not only omega, x, y and z in your code, but also a new variable CODE_CONTENT_IN_THIS_RUN containing the code, the running time and other information of your computer. CODE_CONTENT_IN_THIS_RUN is designed to have such a long and all uppercase name to avoid conflict with your own variable.

If you change the value of omega from 1 to 2 and run the code the second time, you will find another three files: Trial_run2.mat, Trial_run2_fig1.fig, and Trial_run2_fig2.fig. Also, the variable CODE_CONTENT_IN_THIS_RUN is in the file Trial_run2.mat.

The code content is saved in CODE_CONTENT_IN_THIS_RUN in the command begin on. Therefore, you are free to change your code during exeution if it takes a long time.

over is default to save all variables in the workspace. Delete the variables before using over if you don't want to save them.

For Python

Use autosave.py for Python 2.x and autosave3.py for Python 3.x.

The python part is not as convenient as that of matlab. You have to save the figure by yourself. A simple example:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from autosave import saveRunData

omega = 1
x = np.linspace(-10,10,100)
y = np.sin(omega*x)
run_id = saveRunData({'omega':omega, 'x':x, 'y':y})

plt.figure
plt.plot(x,y)
plt.savefig(run_id+'_fig1.png')

Save the code as Trial.py and run it, you will find two new files in the same directory of Trial.py: Trial_run1.pkl and Trial_run1_fig1.png. Load data in Trial_run1.pkl using the package cloudpickle or the function load in autosave.py, you will find not only the key omega, x and y, but also CODE_CONTENT_IN_THIS_RUN containing the code content of your code.

If you change the value of omega from 1 to 2 and run the code the second time, you will find another two files: Trial_run2.pkl and Trial_run2_fig1.png. Also, the variable CODE_CONTENT_IN_THIS_RUN is in the file Trial_run2.pkl.

The code content is saved in CODE_CONTENT_IN_THIS_RUN when saveRunData is imported. Therefore, you are free to change your code during exeution if it takes a long time.