STORAGE AND HANDLING OF BINARY DATA USING FORTRAN WITH APPLICATIONS TO INTEGER PROGRAMMING

Most integer programming algorithms involve at least some binary data handling, e. g. , set membership, intersection, and union. A presentation is made of the important concerns involved in implementation. When the algorithms are coded for the computer an effort is sometimes made to take advantage of the basic binary configuration of the digital computer to aid in the storage and handling of such data. In the past this has meant the use of assembly language subroutines. Of particular interest are (1) the use of the computer arithmetic to achieve the relative complement operation and (2) the importance of additional savings due to overhead reduction when bit storage is used. Computational results are presented comparing various regimes for storing and handling binary data.