The File Declaration

External file names that you want to use for reporting must be linked to AIMMS identifiers in your model. In this way, external file names become data. Whenever you want to send output to a particular external file, you must refer to its associated identifier. This linking is achieved using a File declaration, the attributes of which are given in this table.

Attribute	Value-type	See also page
Name	string-expression
Device	disk, window, void.
Mode	replace, merge
Encoding	an element in AllCharacterEncodings	Character encoding used in text files
Text	string	The Text and Comment attributes
Comment	comment string	The Text and Comment attributes
Convention	convention	The Convention attribute, Globally Overriding Units Through Conventions

The Name attribute

With the Name attribute you can specify the actual name of the disk file or window that you want to refer to. If the file identifier refers to a disk file, the Name will be the file name on disk. If it refers to a window the Name attribute will serve as the title of the window. If you do not specify a name, AIMMS will construct a default name, using the internal identifier name as the root and .put as the extension.

The Device attribute

The Device attribute can have three values

• disk (default),

• window, and

• void.

You can use it to indicate whether the output should be directed to an external file on disk, a window in the graphical user interface, or whether no output should be generated at all. This latter void device is very convenient, for instance, to hide output statements in your code that are useful during the development of your model but should not be displayed in an end-user version.

The Mode attribute

You can use the Mode attribute to specify whether the file or window should be overwritten (replace mode, default), or appended to (merge mode). The graphical window in the user interface differs from a file in that it can be closed manually by the user. In this case, its contents are lost and AIMMS starts writing to a new instance regardless of the mode.

Example

The following File declarations illustrate the declaration of a link to the external file result.dat in the Output subdirectory of the project directory, and a text window that will appear with the title Model results. The contents of ResultFile will be overwritten whenever it is opened, while the window ResultWindow will be appended to whenever possible.

File ResultFile {
    Name       : "Output\\result.dat";
    Device     : disk;
    Mode       : replace;
}
File ResultWindow {
    Name       : "Model results";
    Device     : window;
    Mode       : merge;
}

The Encoding attribute

In the Encoding attribute of a file, a specific character encoding can be specified for that file, either as a specific element of the set AllCharacterEncodings or as an element parameter with the set AllCharacterEncodings as its range. Encodings are explained in Paragraph Text files on Page Character encoding used in text files. In the example below, the attribute Encoding states that code page WINDOWS-1252 should be used for the file WindmillLocations.txt. This code page is not uncommon in the Netherlands.

File WindMillLocs {
    Name       :  "WindmillLocations.txt";
    Encoding   :  'WINDOWS-1252';
}

The statement Write to file WindMillLocs ; will subsequently write the file "WindmillLocations.txt" using the character encoding WINDOWS-1252. When the Encoding attribute is not specified, the statements Read from file and Write to file will use the encodings specified by the options default_input_character_encoding and default_output_character_encoding respectively. The default of these options is the preferred encoding UTF8. The Encoding attribute is ignored when reading from files which start with a Unicode BOM (Byte Order Mask).

The Convention attribute

With the Convention attribute you can indicate that AIMMS must assume that the data in the file is to be stored according to the units provided in the specified convention. If the unit specified in the convention differs from the unit in which AIMMS stores its data internally, the data is scaled just prior to data transfer. For the declaration of Conventions you are referred to Globally Overriding Units Through Conventions.