Re: [Help-glpk] Suggestions for GLPK

[Robbie Morrison]

Hello Emanuele

You should join the mailing list if you wish to post.
Moreover, your subject line "Suggestions for GLPK" is
not especially clear and it would help both you and
those later wishing to search the archives if your post
was more precisely titled.

------------------------------------------------------------
To:           address@hidden
Subject:      Suggestions for GLPK
From:         Emanuele Miucci <address@hidden>
Date:         Thu, 31 May 2012 12:09:06 +0200
------------------------------------------------------------

> Dear GLPK group,
>
> I'm Emanuele a PhD student in TLC engeneering at the
> University of Rome "Sapienza".

"TLC" engineering?  What is that?

> I'm using GLPK to solve an optimization problem: the
> input files (.mod and .dat) are written by a C program,
> and then they are used calling glpsol.exe with a
> system().
>
> After the solve command in .mod file I've put a check
> on the results because I want that the system() returns
> 0 only if the optimal solution is found, otherwise it
> has to return a number different from 0. If I use GLPK
> v.4.45 everything works: the solver performs the check
> when the optimal solution is found and when it's not
> found. But if I use GLPK v.4.47 the check is performed
> only when the optimal solution is found.  Can you give
> me some suggestions? Do you know another way to do
> these operations?
>
> Thanks a lot for your attention! Best regards
>
> Emanuele

As you correctly noted, the GLPSOL interface does not
offer a rich set of return codes.  However I was not
aware of the change in behavior between versions 4.45
and 4.47 you mention.  As a consequence of your query,
I will add a new "Exit status" section to the GLPK
wikibook:

  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GLPK/Using_GLPSOL

But I need confirmation from Andrew here:

    0 = solver completed successfully but does not mean
        that an optimal solution was necessarily found
        -- the solver may have detected a proven
        infeasibility for instance / this exit status
        corresponds to 0 being returned from the
        appropriate solver call, one of: 'glp_simplex',
        'glp_exact', 'glp_interior', or 'glp_intopt'

    else non-zero

I think that the GLPK API manual should also be updated
to record this information.

Getting back to your original question.  If you code
using the GLPK APIs (rather than invoke the 'system'
function), you can examine the value returned by the
(above mentioned) solver call and respond accordingly
(more details in the API manual).  Moreover, GLPK
offers APIs to read in MathProg models and write out
the solutions in various formats.

Otherwise you can continue with the 'stdlib.h' 'system'
call, redirect the GLPSOL terminal output to a text
file, and then read this file in and examine its
contents (someone who uses Windows might be able to
help with the redirect syntax for that system).
Personally I would use 'Boost.String_Algo' or even
'Boost.Regex' C++ libraries for the text scanning part
(but you could also use standard C string functions):

  http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_49_0/doc/html/string_algo.html
  http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_49_0/libs/regex/doc/html/index.html

The first suggestion is programmatically cleaner.  The
second option would need to be updated whenever GLPK
modifies its terminal reporting.

HTH, Robbie
---
Robbie Morrison
PhD student -- policy-oriented energy system simulation
Technical University of Berlin (TU-Berlin), Germany
University email (redirected) : address@hidden
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