Global Structures

In general the user does not need to know much about the use of global structures in MATCONT but advanced users can find it useful since a lot of additional information can be hidden in these structures. MATCONT uses a structure cds (continuation descriptor structure) which is global in the continuer routine cont.m and in all (12) curve definition files and it carries information back and forth between them (cf. Figure 4). Also, cds has a field cds.options with the fields described in §3.4. It contains default values for these options but overrides them with the values in the options-structure that is passed with the call of cont.m. Other fields of cds.options are filled via the interaction with the curve definition file which is also passed with the call to cont.m

Next, MATCONT uses more specific global structures, namely:

These specific structures carry information that is collected or computed in the initializers to the curve definition files in which they are global. In the initializers themselves other specific structures can also be global, depending on the data that are used in the initializer. For example, in the initializer init_H_LC not only lds and cds are global but also eds and hds. Indeed, Hopf points can be detected on equilibrium curves or be taken from Hopf curves.