Using SYMPHONY from the Command Line

For batch processing and scripting, SYMPHONY can also be called from the command line from a terminal in any operating system (note that in the Windows terminal, the path separator is $\backslash$ rather than /). When called from the command line, a number of command-line switches can be invoked to specify the file to be read and solved, as well as set parameters. Note that the switches are Unix-style, even in Windows). At a minimum, one must specify the name of the file to be read and solved. The following is the calling sequence to load in an instance file in MPS format and solve it.

 ./symphony -F sample.mps

To read and solve a model in LP format, the command would be

 ./symphony -L sample.lp

To read and solve a GMPL model and associated data file, the command would be

 ./symphony -F sample.mod -D sample.dat

In addition to specifying the name of the instance file, most of the common parameters can also be set on the command line by adding various switches. Calling SYMPHONY with just the argument -h will list all the options. To set parameters that cannot be set on the command line or to save parameter setting, it is possible to use a parameter file in which a group of parameters can be set. To invoke SYMPHONY with a parameter file, type ./symphony -f filename, where filename is the name of the parameter file. The format of the file and a list of all parameters is given in Section 6.4.

The output level can be controlled through the use of the verbosity parameter, which can be invoked Setting this parameter at different levels will cause different progress messages to be printed out. Level 0 only prints out the introductory and solution summary messages, along with status messages every 10 minutes. Level 1 prints out a message every time a new node is created. Level 3 prints out messages describing each iteration of the solution process. Levels beyond 3 print out even more detailed information. To get no output at all, the verbosity level must be set to -2.