ALMERGE is a command-line program to merge two SAS data sets together or to extrapolate several SAS data sets to infinite dilution (zero concentration).
Extrapolate to "zero concentration". If this option is not specified and the --output option is present then the program will merge the lowest concentration data with the highest concentration data.
ALMERGE works with buffer-subtracted concentration-normalized experimental SAS data files (*.dat) in ASCII format containing 3 columns: (1) momentum transfer, (2) experimental intensity and (3) experimental errors. ALMERGE will read the concentration value if the file format is compatible with the libsaxsdocument library.
The input data must be on the same s-grid; the angular range (smin—smax) must be the same.
ALMERGE does not produce any output files unless the output option was specified.
If the zerconc option was specified than the program will save the data extrapolated to infinite dilution, otherwise the highest and the lowest concentration data sets will be merged and saved.
Here the first input file 'run_031.dat' is taken as a reference; the intensities in the next file 'run_064.dat' should be multiplied by 1.1083 to make the best overlap, the two files will overlap from point 56 to point 166, assuming that the concentration of the reference is correct, the concentration of 'run_064.dat' should be 8.7 / 1.1083 = 7.85; the next file 'run_066.dat' should be multiplied by 1.369, it will overlap with the reference from point 41 to point 286 and so on. Note that the concentration of the last file 'run_070.dat' could not be read from the file header.
The program identified the lowest and the highest concentrations, scaled the lowest concentration in a way that it fits the highest concentration (by multiplying by 1.1905) and produced a merged file that has low concentration data (points 1-80) followed by averaged data (points 81-186) followed by high concentration data (points 187 till the last). Note that the concentration of the last file 'run_070.dat' was specified.
Here the program identified the highest concentration, scaled all other data against the highest concentration data and used points 1-80 of the five data sets to extrapolate the data to an infinite dilution; in the resulting file the points from 81 till the last are taken from the highest concentration data.