doc/quicktour.dox
author athos
Fri, 24 Jun 2005 21:02:47 +0000
changeset 1513 b2a79aaa6867
parent 1287 984723507b86
child 1514 c9b9bc63db4e
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Minor changes
     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 of 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: save them on your computer and compile them according to the description in the page about \ref getsart How to start using LEMON):
    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 suppose them later as well.
    29  \code
    30   typedef ListGraph Graph;
    31   typedef Graph::NodeIt NodeIt;
    32 
    33   Graph g;
    34   
    35   for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
    36     g.addNode();
    37   
    38   for (NodeIt i(g); i!=INVALID; ++i)
    39     for (NodeIt j(g); j!=INVALID; ++j)
    40       if (i != j) g.addEdge(i, j);
    41  \endcode 
    42 
    43 See the whole program in file \ref helloworld.cc.
    44 
    45 If you want to read more on the LEMON graph structures and concepts, read the page about \ref graphs "graphs". 
    46 
    47 -# 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 
    48 in that format (find the documentation of the DIMACS file format on the web). 
    49 \code
    50 Graph g;
    51 std::ifstream f("graph.dim");
    52 readDimacs(f, g);
    53 \endcode
    54 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".
    55 
    56 
    57 - If you want to solve some transportation problems in a network then 
    58 you will want to find shortest paths between nodes of a graph. This is 
    59 usually solved using Dijkstra's algorithm. A utility
    60 that solves this is  the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class".
    61 The following code is a simple program using the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON
    62 Dijkstra class" and it also shows how to define a map on the edges (the length
    63 function):
    64 
    65 \code
    66 
    67     typedef ListGraph Graph;
    68     typedef Graph::Node Node;
    69     typedef Graph::Edge Edge;
    70     typedef Graph::EdgeMap<int> LengthMap;
    71 
    72     Graph g;
    73 
    74     //An example from Ahuja's book
    75 
    76     Node s=g.addNode();
    77     Node v2=g.addNode();
    78     Node v3=g.addNode();
    79     Node v4=g.addNode();
    80     Node v5=g.addNode();
    81     Node t=g.addNode();
    82 
    83     Edge s_v2=g.addEdge(s, v2);
    84     Edge s_v3=g.addEdge(s, v3);
    85     Edge v2_v4=g.addEdge(v2, v4);
    86     Edge v2_v5=g.addEdge(v2, v5);
    87     Edge v3_v5=g.addEdge(v3, v5);
    88     Edge v4_t=g.addEdge(v4, t);
    89     Edge v5_t=g.addEdge(v5, t);
    90   
    91     LengthMap len(g);
    92 
    93     len.set(s_v2, 10);
    94     len.set(s_v3, 10);
    95     len.set(v2_v4, 5);
    96     len.set(v2_v5, 8);
    97     len.set(v3_v5, 5);
    98     len.set(v4_t, 8);
    99     len.set(v5_t, 8);
   100 
   101     std::cout << "The id of s is " << g.id(s)<< std::endl;
   102     std::cout <<"The id of t is " << g.id(t)<<"."<<std::endl;
   103 
   104     std::cout << "Dijkstra algorithm test..." << std::endl;
   105 
   106     Dijkstra<Graph, LengthMap> dijkstra_test(g,len);
   107     
   108     dijkstra_test.run(s);
   109 
   110     
   111     std::cout << "The distance of node t from node s: " << dijkstra_test.dist(t)<<std::endl;
   112 
   113     std::cout << "The shortest path from s to t goes through the following nodes" <<std::endl;
   114  std::cout << " (the first one is t, the last one is s): "<<std::endl;
   115 
   116     for (Node v=t;v != s; v=dijkstra_test.predNode(v)){
   117 	std::cout << g.id(v) << "<-";
   118     }
   119     std::cout << g.id(s) << std::endl;	
   120 \endcode
   121 
   122 See the whole program in \ref dijkstra_demo.cc.
   123 
   124 The first part of the code is self-explanatory: we build the graph and set the
   125 length values of the edges. Then we instantiate a member of the Dijkstra class
   126 and run the Dijkstra algorithm from node \c s. After this we read some of the
   127 results. 
   128 You can do much more with the Dijkstra class, for example you can run it step
   129 by step and gain full control of the execution. For a detailed description, see the documentation of the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class".
   130 
   131 
   132 - If you want to design a network and want to minimize the total length
   133 of wires then you might be looking for a <b>minimum spanning tree</b> in
   134 an undirected graph. This can be found using the Kruskal algorithm: the 
   135 class \ref lemon::Kruskal "LEMON Kruskal class" does this job for you.
   136 The following code fragment shows an example:
   137 
   138 Ide Zsuzska fog irni!
   139 
   140 - 
   141 
   142 \code
   143 
   144 \endcode
   145 
   146 
   147 */