An introduction to the Standard Data Input Format (SIF) 
            for nonlinear  mathematical programming problems

                A.R.  Conn,  Nick  Gould  and Ph.L. Toint

                               Report 91/08 

If you read this line, this is probably  because you are interested in solving
some  optimization problem(s),  and that  you hope that  the LANCELOT  package
might help you.  The purpose of this report is to help  this hope materialize:
starting from simple examples, we intend to tell you
 - how to specify the problem you are interested in,
 - how  to  use LANCELOT to  solve it.  We  will do both at once, because this
process is actually quite simple.  Of course, specifying a problem and solving
it are formally two different tasks,  each requiring a different set of tools.
This will force us to distinguish these tasks  in our examples as well, but we
will always try to remember that specifying the problem is only a step towards
its practical solution.

The general approach that  we intend to use throughout this report is to learn
some basic problem specification techniques first and to see  how to solve the
resulting simple problems, gradually building on these to tackle more and more
complex cases.   This  text is therefore a learning  tool,  and should not  be
considered as  a reference guide.  Such a reference  text is presented  in the
LANCELOT manual.