Log File

It's often useful to keep a log of the work done using the programs. The -e option can be used to specify the log or error file. Each time a program in the QTL Cartographer system runs, a summary of all the parameters and options is written to the log file. The file also keeps track of when the program was run and may contain other diagnostic information. The log file is appended to with each run rather than overwritten.

Remember that the log file is appended to during each invocation of any of the programs. This is something to keep in mind if you do a bootstrap in a batch file. After a thousand replications, the log file will tend to grow large. The batch file examples included with the QTL Cartographer system (see 2.4.2) take this into account by saving a copy of the log file before running the bootstrap, and deleting the large (and unnecessary) temporary log file at the end.