PGA:

PGA is a simple testbed for basic explorations in GENETIC ALGORITHMs. Command line arguments control a range of parameters, there are a number of built-in problems for the GA to solve. The current set includes:

• maximize the number of bits set in a CHROMOSOME

• De Jong's functions DJ1, DJ2, DJ3, DJ5

• binary F6, used by Schaffer et al

• a crude 1-d knapsack problem; you specify a target and a set of numbers in an external file, GA tries to find a subset that sums as closely as possible to the target

• the `royal road' function(s); a chromosome is regarded as a set of consecutive blocks of size K, and scores K for each block entirely filled with 1s, etc; a range of parameters.

• max contiguous bits, you choose the ALLELE range.

• timetabling, with various smart MUTATION options; capable of solving a good many real-world timetabling problems (has done so)

Lots of GA options: rank, roulette, tournament, marriage-tournament, spatially-structured SELECTION; one-point, two-point, uniform or no CROSSOVER; fixed or adaptive mutation; one child or two; etc.

Default output is curses-based, with optional output to file; can be run non-interactively too for batched series of experiments.

It's easy to add your own problems. Chromosomes are represented as character arrays, so you are not (quite) stuck with bit-string problem encodings.

PGA has been used for teaching for a couple of years now, and has been used as a starting point by a fair number of people for their own projects. So it's reasonably reliable. However, if you find bugs, or have useful contributions to make, Tell Me! It is available by FTP from ftp://ftp.dai.ed.ac.uk/pub/pga/pga-3.1.tar.gz (see the file pga.README in the same directory for more information)

Peter Ross, Department of AI, University of Edinburgh, 80 South Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1HN, UK. Net: <peter@aisb.ed.ac.uk>