LANCELOT_simple, a simple interface for LANCELOT B

              N. I. M. Gould , D. Orban and Ph. L. Toint

        Report 07/12, Dept Maths, University of Namur -FUNDP, Belgium


We  describe  LANCELOT_simple,  an  interface  to  the  LANCELOT  B  nonlinear
optimization  package within the  GALAHAD library  (Conn, Gould,  Toint, 1992)
which  ignores problem  structure. The  result  is an  easy-to-use Fortran  90
subroutine,  with  a  small  number of  intuitively  interpretable  arguments.
However, since structure  is ignored, the means of  presenting problems to the
solver  limited   and  the  choice  of   algorithmic  parameters  considerably
restricted,  the  performance  is  likely  to be  sub-optimal.   The  proposed
interface may nevertheless  be useful for users interested  in the solution of
simple  low-dimensional problems  when  ease of  interface  matters more  than
actual numerical efficiency.