Genetic Programming in C++ FAQ

a.fraser@eee.salford.ac.uk

Contents

General:

Q1: How do you produce repeatable results with gpc++? Everytime I run it I get different results and I would like to reproduce the population dynamics of a particular run I have found.

Q2: Why are there so many comments as it makes it almost impossible to decide which are comments and which are actual code?

Q3: You have (at least) 3 methods of selecting parents for crossover which is best ?

Q4: Why in the main() of gpmain.cc do you get the argv and argc arguments the wrong way round.

Q5: I have noticed that when I put less than the correct number of arguments on the command line the system crashes rather than giving me an error.Why?

Q6: When attempting to compile gpc++ the compilation fails with numerous errors one of which is 'Cannot include iostream.h file not found' what can I do?

Q7: Can gpc++ be made to go even faster ?

Q8: Why the large number of files in your release? Some contain very little actual code.

DOS Only:

Q9: When uncompressing gpc++ with pkunzip a number of files with the same name are produced and have to be overwriten or ignored. Why?

Q10: When running gpc++ it produces the output file but when on viewing the file the average fitness and length are complete garbage. Why?

UNIX Only:

Q11: Surely you shouldn't name the variable name CFLAGS in the Makefile as you are using C++ ?

Q12: Why in UNIX compilation did you not set up the -O optimisation flags ?

Questions offering insight into the mind of the author:

Q13: Why is gpc++ public domain ?

Q14: What would happen if I offered the author a job which researched genetic programming ?

Written and 'html'ised by Adam Fraser. If you would like to show your appreciation of the code which this FAQ documents, I do accept cheques. Please send whatever you think the code is worth.

Gpc++ v0.1 was released in March 93.

Gpc++ v0.4 (this version) June 94.

This document: 13 September 1994