# What's the best practice to pre-process parameter file

I have a parameter yaml file, some of these parameters are easy to be read by human, but need some transformation to be used by ROS nodes.

For example, in yaml file I have

# ID of this robot
this_id: 3


but all of my ROS nodes does not directly use the id 3, instead they use 1 << (3-1) = 0b00000100 = 4 (i.e. the robot #n is actually represented as 1 << (n-1) in my program. Directly writing this_id: <1 << (n-1)> in yaml file will be confusing, and not friendly for human beings. So I have to do this every time I use the parameter:

uint8_t this_id;
nh.getParam("this_id", this_id);
this_id = 1 << (this_id - 1);           // I have to do this converting in every nodes


This is just an example, and sometimes I have to do much more complex converting.

My question is, is there any better method to do this converting or parameter pre-processing? So that I can have numbers 3 friendly for human beings, while having easy access to things like 0b00000100 which is actually used in my nodes, and avoid do manually converting in every node.

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