Doc review+corrections in my own documentation according to the reviewers comments.
3 \page quicktour Quick Tour to LEMON
5 Let us first answer the question <b>"What do I want to use LEMON for?"
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".
21 You will also want to assign data to the edges or nodes of the graph, for
22 example a length or capacity function defined on the edges. You can do this in
23 LEMON using so called \b 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 of any type. Read more about maps \ref maps-page "here".
25 Some examples are the following (you will find links next to the code fragments that help to download full demo programs: save them on your computer and compile them according to the description in the page about \ref getsart How to start using LEMON):
27 <ul> <li> The first thing to discuss is the way one can create data structures
28 like graphs and maps in a program using LEMON.
29 //There are more graph types
30 //implemented in LEMON and you can implement your own graph type just as well:
31 //read more about this in the already mentioned page on \ref graphs "graphs".
33 First we show how to add nodes and edges to a graph manually. We will also
34 define a map on the edges of the graph. After this we show the way one can
35 read a graph (and perhaps maps on it) from a stream (e.g. a file). Of course
36 we also have routines that write a graph (and perhaps maps) to a stream
37 (file): this will also be shown. LEMON supports the DIMACS file formats to
38 store network optimization problems, but more importantly we also have our own
39 file format that gives a more flexible way to store data related to network
42 <ol> <li>The following code fragment shows how to fill a graph with
43 data. It creates a complete graph on 4 nodes. The type Listgraph is one of the
44 LEMON graph types: the typedefs in the beginning are for convenience and we
45 will suppose them later as well.
47 \dontinclude hello_lemon.cc
51 See the whole program in file \ref hello_lemon.cc in \c demo subdir of
54 If you want to read more on the LEMON graph structures and
55 concepts, read the page about \ref graphs "graphs".
57 <li> The following code shows how to read a graph from a stream
58 (e.g. a file) in the DIMACS file format (find the documentation of the
59 DIMACS file formats on the web).
63 std::ifstream f("graph.dim");
67 One can also store network (graph+capacity on the edges) instances and
68 other things (minimum cost flow instances etc.) in DIMACS format and
69 use these in LEMON: to see the details read the documentation of the
70 \ref dimacs.h "Dimacs file format reader". There you will also find
71 the details about the output routines into files of the DIMACS format.
73 <li>DIMACS formats could not give us the flexibility we needed,
74 so we worked out our own file format. Instead of any explanation let us give a
75 short example file in this format: read the detailed description of the LEMON
76 graph file format and input-output routines \ref graph-io-page here.
78 So here is a file describing a graph of 10 nodes (0 to 9), two nodemaps
79 (called \c coordinates_x and \c coordinates_y), several edges, an edge map
80 called \c length and two designated nodes (called \c source and \c target).
82 \todo Maybe another example would be better here.
86 id coordinates_x coordinates_y
128 Finally let us give a simple example that reads a graph from a file and writes
131 \todo This is to be done!
134 <li> If you want to solve some transportation problems in a network then
135 you will want to find shortest paths between nodes of a graph. This is
136 usually solved using Dijkstra's algorithm. A utility
137 that solves this is the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class".
138 The following code is a simple program using the
139 \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class" and it also shows how to define a map on the edges (the length
144 typedef ListGraph Graph;
145 typedef Graph::Node Node;
146 typedef Graph::Edge Edge;
147 typedef Graph::EdgeMap<int> LengthMap;
151 //An example from Ahuja's book
160 Edge s_v2=g.addEdge(s, v2);
161 Edge s_v3=g.addEdge(s, v3);
162 Edge v2_v4=g.addEdge(v2, v4);
163 Edge v2_v5=g.addEdge(v2, v5);
164 Edge v3_v5=g.addEdge(v3, v5);
165 Edge v4_t=g.addEdge(v4, t);
166 Edge v5_t=g.addEdge(v5, t);
178 std::cout << "The id of s is " << g.id(s)<< std::endl;
179 std::cout <<"The id of t is " << g.id(t)<<"."<<std::endl;
181 std::cout << "Dijkstra algorithm test..." << std::endl;
183 Dijkstra<Graph, LengthMap> dijkstra_test(g,len);
185 dijkstra_test.run(s);
188 std::cout << "The distance of node t from node s: " << dijkstra_test.dist(t)<<std::endl;
190 std::cout << "The shortest path from s to t goes through the following nodes" <<std::endl;
191 std::cout << " (the first one is t, the last one is s): "<<std::endl;
193 for (Node v=t;v != s; v=dijkstra_test.predNode(v)){
194 std::cout << g.id(v) << "<-";
196 std::cout << g.id(s) << std::endl;
199 See the whole program in \ref dijkstra_demo.cc.
201 The first part of the code is self-explanatory: we build the graph and set the
202 length values of the edges. Then we instantiate a member of the Dijkstra class
203 and run the Dijkstra algorithm from node \c s. After this we read some of the
205 You can do much more with the Dijkstra class, for example you can run it step
206 by step and gain full control of the execution. For a detailed description, see the documentation of the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class".
209 <li> If you want to design a network and want to minimize the total length
210 of wires then you might be looking for a <b>minimum spanning tree</b> in
211 an undirected graph. This can be found using the Kruskal algorithm: the
212 class \ref lemon::Kruskal "LEMON Kruskal class" does this job for you.
213 The following code fragment shows an example:
215 Ide Zsuzska fog irni!
217 <li>Many problems in network optimization can be formalized by means
218 of a linear programming problem (LP problem, for short). In our
219 library we decided not to write an LP solver, since such packages are
220 available in the commercial world just as well as in the open source
221 world, and it is also a difficult task to compete these. Instead we
222 decided to develop an interface that makes it easier to use these
223 solvers together with LEMON. The advantage of this approach is
224 twofold. Firstly our C++ interface is more comfortable than the
225 solvers' native interface. Secondly, changing the underlying solver in
226 a certain software using LEMON's LP interface needs zero effort. So,
227 for example, one may try his idea using a free solver, demonstrate its
228 usability for a customer and if it works well, but the performance
229 should be improved, then one may decide to purchase and use a better
233 interface for the commercial LP solver software \b CPLEX (developed by ILOG)
234 and for the open source solver \b GLPK (a shorthand for Gnu Linear Programming
237 We will show two examples, the first one shows how simple it is to formalize
238 and solve an LP problem in LEMON, while the second one shows how LEMON
239 facilitates solving network optimization problems using LP solvers.
242 <li>The following code shows how to solve an LP problem using the LEMON lp
243 interface. The code together with the comments is self-explanatory.
247 //A default solver is taken
249 typedef LpDefault::Row Row;
250 typedef LpDefault::Col Col;
253 //This will be a maximization
256 //We add coloumns (variables) to our problem
257 Col x1 = lp.addCol();
258 Col x2 = lp.addCol();
259 Col x3 = lp.addCol();
262 lp.addRow(x1+x2+x3 <=100);
263 lp.addRow(10*x1+4*x2+5*x3<=600);
264 lp.addRow(2*x1+2*x2+6*x3<=300);
265 //Nonnegativity of the variables
266 lp.colLowerBound(x1, 0);
267 lp.colLowerBound(x2, 0);
268 lp.colLowerBound(x3, 0);
270 lp.setObj(10*x1+6*x2+4*x3);
272 //Call the routine of the underlying LP solver
276 if (lp.primalStatus()==LpSolverBase::OPTIMAL){
277 printf("Z = %g; x1 = %g; x2 = %g; x3 = %g\n",
279 lp.primal(x1), lp.primal(x2), lp.primal(x3));
282 std::cout<<"Optimal solution not found!"<<std::endl;
288 See the whole code in \ref lp_demo.cc.
290 <li>The second example shows how easy it is to formalize a max-flow
291 problem as an LP problem using the LEMON LP interface: we are looking
292 for a real valued function defined on the edges of the digraph
293 satisfying the nonnegativity-, the capacity constraints and the
294 flow-conservation constraints and giving the largest flow value
295 between to designated nodes.
297 In the following code we suppose that we already have the graph \c g,
298 the capacity map \c cap, the source node \c s and the target node \c t
299 in the memory. We will also omit the typedefs.
302 //Define a map on the edges for the variables of the LP problem
303 typename G::template EdgeMap<LpDefault::Col> x(g);
306 //Nonnegativity and capacity constraints
307 for(EdgeIt e(g);e!=INVALID;++e) {
308 lp.colUpperBound(x[e],cap[e]);
309 lp.colLowerBound(x[e],0);
313 //Flow conservation constraints for the nodes (except for 's' and 't')
314 for(NodeIt n(g);n!=INVALID;++n) if(n!=s&&n!=t) {
316 for(InEdgeIt e(g,n);e!=INVALID;++e) ex+=x[e];
317 for(OutEdgeIt e(g,n);e!=INVALID;++e) ex-=x[e];
321 //Objective function: the flow value entering 't'
324 for(InEdgeIt e(g,t);e!=INVALID;++e) ex+=x[e];
325 for(OutEdgeIt e(g,t);e!=INVALID;++e) ex-=x[e];
332 //Solve with the underlying solver
337 The complete program can be found in file \ref lp_maxflow_demo.cc. After compiling run it in the form:
339 <tt>./lp_maxflow_demo < ?????????.lgf</tt>
341 where ?????????.lgf is a file in the lemon format containing a maxflow instance (designated "source", "target" nodes and "capacity" map on the edges).