Daily Archives: June 15, 2010

How to update Gams and keeping an older version

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Gams is often updated and sometimes it can be good to have the old version still around (especially if you are not sure if the new version is working properly or if you are trying the beta version and want to switch back to the old version).
What I usually do is the following:
  1. I rename the directory of my installed version to GamsOld
  2. Install the new version (directory “Gams”)
  3. That is almost all.

The advantages ares:

  1. first of all, I still have the older version around (I usually keep one older version and delete the others).
  2. As I work
… Read the rest “How to update Gams and keeping an older version”

Guidelines for Posting to the Gams Mailing List

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The Gams mailing list can be very helpful. There are a lot of people who are willing to use their free time to answer your questions. My advice: subscribe to the mailing list at http://www.listserv.dfn.de/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=gams-l&A=1 ( and even if you don’t post to it, you can learn a lot of the questions and answers by others. If you post: don’t be afraid to ask a stupid question. The worst thing that can happen is that you get an answer like I once got. I asked a really stupid answer and got the answer: “Think”!

Tom Rutherford posted some nice guidelines … Read the rest “Guidelines for Posting to the Gams Mailing List”

Outline Mode in Gams-Mode for Emacs

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Let’s get to know the great things you can do with Gams-mode. In the previous post I showed how Gams-mode nicely colors your code, the syntax-highlighting. In this post we will look at the great way Gams-mode shows the results of your model run. This is done in the Gams-Outline mode.
First run your model by hitting C-c C-s (C stands for Ctrl) or use the same command from the menu. Emacs will open a new window and you see how Gams solves your model. When Gams is finished you can hit F10 (or C-c C-v)  to show the listing
… Read the rest “Outline Mode in Gams-Mode for Emacs”

Emacs Goodies

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Often you have to repeat a series of keystrokes. That is probably boring if the number of repetitions is low, but gets really annoying if the number gets higher. A typical example is formatting data or text. Take the following text snippet where we have data coming from a comma separated file:
A;410
B;243
C;134
A;410
B;324
C;134
A;410
B;324
C;134
…
and you would like to have this text in the following format
A        410,
B        243,
Emacs makes this a very easy job: Start the macro recording with C-x (  or F3 (the C stands for the Control
… Read the rest “Emacs Goodies”

Syntax Coloring in Gams-Mode

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I suppose you have installed emacs and gams-mode for emacs (if not see my preceding posts) and now are eager to start working on your model.
Let us start simple and get a model from the Gams-library. If you started emacs you are not in gams-mode (you can check this by looking at the menu bar: there is no gams-entry). If you load a gams model (with the extension “gms”), Emacs automatically turns on gams-mode and the gams entry appears in the menu bar (blue arrow). The first thing you probably notice is the syntax coloring. The coloring you will
… Read the rest “Syntax Coloring in Gams-Mode”