What is MPS format?
MPS format was named after an early IBM LP product and has emerged as a de facto standard ASCII medium among most of the commercial LP codes. Essentially all commercial LP codes accept this format, but if you are using public domain software and have MPS files, you may need to write your own reader routine for this. It’s not too hard. See also the comment regarding the [#lp_solve lp_solve] code, in another section of this document, for the availability of an MPS reader. The main things to know about MPS format are that it is column oriented (as opposed to entering the model as equations), and everything (variables, rows, etc.) gets a name. The MIPLIB site provides a concise summary of MPS format, and a more detailed description is given in [#Murtagh [Murtagh]]. MPS is a very old format, so it is set up as though you were using punch cards, and is not free format. Fields start in column 1, 5, 15, 25, 40 and 50. Sections of an MPS file are marked by so-called header cards, which are dist
