Here is another example bash script for running a set of row-wise and column-size experiments on a several input files which specify the grid size and number of iterations (I've given my files names which include the size and the number of iterations so that the script output helps me easily identify the different results). This is just one example that demonstrates how to iterate over a set of values for number of threads and over a set of GOL init files (you likely will want to make multiple run scripts that test certain things, and you may find the non-file init command line args more useful for run scripts):

cat testrun.sh

#!/bin/bash

for f in infile_100_100.txt infile_500_500.txt infile_1000_1000.txt
do
  for ((t=1; t <= 64; t*=2))
  do
    echo ""
    echo "$f  $t row"
    for((i=0; i < 5; i+=1)) 
    do
      time ./gol -t $t -f $f -x
    done

    echo ""
    echo "$f  $t column"
    for((i=0; i < 5; i+=1)) 
    do
      time ./gol -t $t -f $f -x -c
    done
  done
done

To run, make sure the script file is executable:

ls -l     # lists its permisions
chomd 700 testrun.sh    # sets rwx permission for file owner

To run:

./testrun.sh

It is often useful to redirect the output from these runs to a file. For, example to redirect stdout and stderr to a file named "resultfile":

./testrun.sh  &> resultfile