>
>  Last modified :  1996 jan. 17.
>
*
*  GAS, a method for global optimization and heuristic search
*
*  Authors:
*         Mark Jelasity
*              e-mail: jelasity@inf.u-szeged.hu
*         Jozsef Dombi
*              e-mail: dombi@inf.u-szeged.hu
*
*  Jozsef Attila University, Szeged, Hungary
*
*  This work was supported by the ESPRIT project BRA 6020 and 
*  by the OTKA grant 501.
*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
see the following paper for a description:

@ARTICLE{Jel98a,
        author = "M{\'a}rk Jelasity and J{\'o}zsef Dombi",
        year = "1998",
        title = "{GAS}, a Concept on Modeling Species in Genetic Algorithms", 
        journal = "Artificial Intelligence",
        publisher = "Elsevier",
        address = "Amsterdam",
        volume = "99",
        number = "1",
        pages = "1--19" 
}


GAS is  a method for global optimization and heuristic search designed to
find all  of the  local maxima of a function parallely. The domain of the
function may be an n-dimensional real set or {0,1}**n.

GAS is  based on  a genetic algorithm (GA). If you are interested in GAs,
please, refer for example to

//ftp.cs.cuhk.hk/pub/EC/GA

where you will find references, papers and more.

Main features of the GA GAS is based on
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   - steady state selection
   - oscillating population size
   - logically independent breeding and dying-off method

Advanced features
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   - dynamic  taxonomic chart  (a tree-structured classification over the
   search space) creation
   - local  competition for  offspring creation  and for "life" to reduce
   the probability of creating bad offspring
   - gaining information about the structure of the search space
   - species-level genetic operators (eg immigration, fusion)

Articles are available that describe the GAS system and some experimental
results, so  the documentation  presented here  contains mainly practical
information. You can ask for the articles by e-mail:

jelasity@inf.u-szeged.hu       or      dombi@inf.u-szeged.hu

This directory contains

       gas.zip

which is the MSDOS version (use 'pkunzip -d gas' to decompress) and

       gas.tar.gz

which is the  UNIX version. The  C++ source  code  is included  for  both
operation systems, so you can link the system to your programs or you can
use the user interface (a high-level language) that is included.

The code  is highly  portable, so you can try to compile the source under
other operation  systems (and  please inform  me if  you  succeed).  (The
source is exactly the same for both MSDOS and UNIX).

If you had any problems, questions or suggestions, please, contact one of
the authors (by e-mail).