Re: [Help-glpk] gmpl manual

[Andrew Makhorin]

> In general I don't recommend generating instance files like MPS or CPLEX
> LP directly.  If you don't want to use a modeling language because of 
> size or other issues, then look at the APIs that solvers have to 
> directly input an instance.  COIN-OR OSI (Open Solver Interface) 
> provides an API that can interface with a number of solvers, including
> GLPK and CLP (both free software).

It seems to me that sometimes generating cplex lp file is much easier
than using api of a particular solver.

Just for an example see:
http://www.oberlin.edu/math/faculty/bosch/pbn-page.html
where the C program pbn.c reads puzzle data from one text file and
writes a mip instance to other text file in cplex lp format. I think
that implementing a similar program using glpk or clp api would be
much more cumbersome.