doc/quicktour.dox
author alpar
Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:48:59 +0000
changeset 1235 4511c7d91834
parent 1181 848b6006941d
child 1287 984723507b86
permissions -rw-r--r--
For cygwin compatibility.
     1 /**
     2 
     3 \page quicktour Quick Tour to LEMON
     4 
     5 Let us first answer the question <b>"What do I want to use LEMON for?"
     6 </b>. 
     7 LEMON is a C++ library, so you can use it if you want to write C++ 
     8 programs. What kind of tasks does the library LEMON help to solve? 
     9 It helps to write programs that solve optimization problems that arise
    10 frequently when <b>designing and testing certain networks</b>, for example
    11 in telecommunication, computer networks, and other areas that I cannot
    12 think of now. A very natural way of modelling these networks is by means
    13 of a <b> graph</b> (we will always mean a directed graph by that and say
    14 <b> undirected graph </b> otherwise). 
    15 So if you want to write a program that works with 
    16 graphs then you might find it useful to use our library LEMON. LEMON 
    17 defines various graph concepts depending on what you want to do with the 
    18 graph: a very good description can be found in the page
    19 about \ref graphs "graphs".
    20 
    21 You will also want to assign data to the edges or nodes of the graph, for example a length or capacity function defined on the edges. You can do this in LEMON using so called \ref maps "maps". You can define a map on the nodes or on the edges of the graph and the value of the map (the range of the function) can be practically almost any type. Read more about maps \ref maps-page "here".
    22 
    23 Some examples are the following (you will find links next to the code fragments that help to download full demo programs):
    24 
    25 - First we give two examples that show how to instantiate a graph. The
    26 first one shows the methods that add nodes and edges, but one will
    27 usually use the second way which reads a graph from a stream (file).
    28 -# The following code fragment shows how to fill a graph with data. It creates a complete graph on 4 nodes. The type Listgraph is one of the LEMON graph types: the typedefs in the beginning are for convenience and we will supppose them later as well.
    29  \code
    30   typedef ListGraph Graph;
    31   typedef Graph::Edge Edge;
    32   typedef Graph::InEdgeIt InEdgeIt;
    33   typedef Graph::OutEdgeIt OutEdgeIt;
    34   typedef Graph::EdgeIt EdgeIt;
    35   typedef Graph::Node Node;
    36   typedef Graph::NodeIt NodeIt;
    37 
    38   Graph g;
    39   
    40   for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
    41     g.addNode();
    42   
    43   for (NodeIt i(g); i!=INVALID; ++i)
    44     for (NodeIt j(g); j!=INVALID; ++j)
    45       if (i != j) g.addEdge(i, j);
    46  \endcode 
    47 
    48 If you want to read more on the LEMON graph structures and concepts, read the page about \ref graphs "graphs". 
    49 
    50 -# The following code shows how to read a graph from a stream (e.g. a file). LEMON supports the DIMACS file format: it can read a graph instance from a file 
    51 in that format (find the documentation of the DIMECS file format on the web). 
    52 \code
    53 Graph g;
    54 std::ifstream f("graph.dim");
    55 readDimacs(f, g);
    56 \endcode
    57 One can also store network (graph+capacity on the edges) instances and other things in DIMACS format and use these in LEMON: to see the details read the documentation of the \ref dimacs.h "Dimacs file format reader".
    58 
    59 
    60 - If you want to solve some transportation problems in a network then 
    61 you will want to find shortest paths between nodes of a graph. This is 
    62 usually solved using Dijkstra's algorithm. A utility
    63 that solves this is  the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class".
    64 The following code is a simple program using the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON
    65 Dijkstra class" and it also shows how to define a map on the edges (the length
    66 function):
    67 
    68 \code
    69 
    70     typedef ListGraph Graph;
    71     typedef Graph::Node Node;
    72     typedef Graph::Edge Edge;
    73     typedef Graph::EdgeMap<int> LengthMap;
    74 
    75     Graph g;
    76 
    77     //An example from Ahuja's book
    78 
    79     Node s=g.addNode();
    80     Node v2=g.addNode();
    81     Node v3=g.addNode();
    82     Node v4=g.addNode();
    83     Node v5=g.addNode();
    84     Node t=g.addNode();
    85 
    86     Edge s_v2=g.addEdge(s, v2);
    87     Edge s_v3=g.addEdge(s, v3);
    88     Edge v2_v4=g.addEdge(v2, v4);
    89     Edge v2_v5=g.addEdge(v2, v5);
    90     Edge v3_v5=g.addEdge(v3, v5);
    91     Edge v4_t=g.addEdge(v4, t);
    92     Edge v5_t=g.addEdge(v5, t);
    93   
    94     LengthMap len(g);
    95 
    96     len.set(s_v2, 10);
    97     len.set(s_v3, 10);
    98     len.set(v2_v4, 5);
    99     len.set(v2_v5, 8);
   100     len.set(v3_v5, 5);
   101     len.set(v4_t, 8);
   102     len.set(v5_t, 8);
   103 
   104     std::cout << "The id of s is " << g.id(s)<< ", the id of t is " << g.id(t)<<"."<<std::endl;
   105 
   106     std::cout << "Dijkstra algorithm test..." << std::endl;
   107 
   108     Dijkstra<Graph, LengthMap> dijkstra_test(g,len);
   109     
   110     dijkstra_test.run(s);
   111 
   112     
   113     std::cout << "The distance of node t from node s: " << dijkstra_test.dist(t)<<std::endl;
   114 
   115     std::cout << "The shortest path from s to t goes through the following nodes (the first one is t, the last one is s): "<<std::endl;
   116 
   117     for (Node v=t;v != s; v=dijkstra_test.predNode(v)){
   118 	std::cout << g.id(v) << "<-";
   119     }
   120     std::cout << g.id(s) << std::endl;	
   121 \endcode
   122 
   123 See the whole program in \file dijkstra_demo.cc.
   124 
   125 The first part of the code is self-explanatory: we build the graph and set the
   126 length values of the edges. Then we instantiate a member of the Dijkstra class
   127 and run the Dijkstra algorithm from node \c s. After this we read some of the
   128 results. 
   129 You can do much more with the Dijkstra class, for example you can run it step
   130 by step and gain full control of the execution. For a detailed description, see the documentation of the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class".
   131 
   132 
   133 - If you want to design a network and want to minimize the total length
   134 of wires then you might be looking for a <b>minimum spanning tree</b> in
   135 an undirected graph. This can be found using the Kruskal algorithm: the 
   136 class \ref lemon::Kruskal "LEMON Kruskal class" does this job for you.
   137 The following code fragment shows an example:
   138 
   139 \code
   140 
   141 \endcode
   142 
   143 
   144 */