Dr. Ampl — a meta solver for optimization

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Once an AMPL model is written, creating an nl file is easy. At the AMPL prompt or in a text file, type the commands.

 ampl: model xyz.mod;
 ampl: data xyz.dat;
 ampl: option nl_comments 1;
 ampl: write gxyz;

Note: The g prefixing xyz in the last command is important. If the above commands are stored in the text file xyz.ampl, have AMPL execute it using ampl xyz.ampl at the command line.

This creates a text file called xyz.nl with some comments. The file is hardly human readable but is easily parsed using the tools in the AMPL library. Its header will be similar to

g3 0 1 0        # problem nltrans
 21 10 1 0 10   # vars, constraints, objectives, ranges, eqns
 0 1    # nonlinear constraints, objectives
 0 0    # network constraints: nonlinear, linear
 0 21 0 # nonlinear vars in constraints, objectives, both
 0 0 0 1        # linear network variables; functions; arith, flags
 0 0 0 0 0      # discrete variables: binary, integer, nonlinear (b,c,o)
 42 21  # nonzeros in Jacobian, gradients
 0 0    # max name lengths: constraints, variables
 0 0 0 0 0      # common exprs: b,c,o,c1,o1

The rest of the file describes the DAG.