OSCAR Block Structure

OSCAR outputs are a family of ASCII and binary formats that follow the OSCAR format conventions.
All OSCAR outputs have the same general structure: a header and an arbitrary number of event blocks. Each event block consists of an arbitrary number of output blocks and special event end lines that mark the end of an event. One output block consists of an output block header and N particle lines, where N is specified in the output block header.
The file structure can be visualized in the following way:

Header
Event block 1
  output block 1
      output block header
      particle line 1
      particle line 2
      ...
      particle line N
  output block 2
  ...
  output block k
  event end line
Event block 2
...

To fully characterise any OSCAR output one has to specify the following formatting:

• header
• output block header
• particle line
• event end line

Each OSCAR output can produce two types of files: collisions output (see OSCAR Collisions Format) and particles output (see OSCAR Particles Format). In both output types, the above structure is the same, however the meaning of the blocks is different. In the collision file one output block typically corresponds to one collision / decay / box wall crossing, while in the particles output one block corresponds to the current particle list at one moment of time. The particles output may contain the particle list at event start (immediately after initialization), at event end (which is reached when time is larger or equal than End_Time in configuration file) and periodically during the evolution, the output period is defined by the Output_Interval option in the configuration file, see content-specific output options. The collisions output contains all collisions / decays / box wall crossings and optionally the initial and final configuration.