CUTE:  
    Constrained and unconstrained testing environment

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


                    Report 93/10


Abstract.  The purpose of this paper is to discuss the scope
 and functionality  of  a versatile  environment for testing
small  and  large-scale  nonlinear  optimization algorithms.
Although  many of  these facilities were originally produced
by the  authors  in  conjunction  with the  software package
LANCELOT, we believe that  they  will be useful in their own
right and  should be  available  to  researchers  for  their
development   of  optimization  software.   The  tools   are
available by anonymous ftp from a number of sources and may,
in many cases, be installed automatically.

The scope of  a major collection of test problems written in
the  standard  input  format  (SIF)  used  by  the  LANCELOT
software  package  is  described.    Recognising  that  most
software was not written  with the SIF in  mind, we  provide
tools  to assist in building an interface between this input
format and other optimization packages.  These tools already
provide a link  between  the SIF  and an number of  existing
packages, including  MINOS  and OSL.   In addition,  as each
problem includes a specific classification that  is designed
to  be useful in identifying particular classes of problems,
facilities are  provided to  build  and manage a database of
this information.

There is a UNIX and C-shell bias to many of the descriptions
in the paper,  since,  for the sake of simplicity, we do not
illustrate everything in  its  fullest generality.  We trust
that  the  majority  of  potential  users  are  sufficiently
familar with UNIX that these examples will not lead to undue
confusion.