Tools Category

All tools included in GAMS distribution are categorized as

GAMS Integrated Development Environments

There are two integrated model development environments including a general text editor with the ability to launch and monitor the compilation and execution of GAMS models: The GAMS IDE and GAMS Studio.

Data Exchange

A collection of tools that provide functionality to exchange data between GAMS and other data sources. This category contains tools for popular data sources and high-level programming environment and like databases (GDX2ACCESS, GDX2SQLITE, MDB2GMS, SQL2GMS), Matlab (GDXMRW), and R (GDXRRW). There are also tools for specialized systems like HAR (GDX2HAR and HAR2GDX), TROLL (GDXTROLL), and VEDA (GDX2VEDA).

Excel

Tools to exchange data with Microsoft Excel are grouped in a subcategory Excel. The tools in this category are GDX2XLS, GDXXRW, MSAPPAVAIL, XLS2GMS, XLSDUMP, and XLSTALK. Many of the tools described here use the GAMS Data eXchange facility GAMS Data eXchange (GDX).

GDX Service

A collection of tools that operate directly on GAMS Data eXchange (GDX) containers to e.g. compare (GDXDIFF), copy (GDXCOPY), merge (GDXMERGE), and rename (GDXRENAME).

Data Transformation

A collection of tools that perform very specific tasks that are awkward or inefficient to implement in GAMS directly. Through GAMS Data eXchange (GDX) and the execution of the tools in this category allow to perform complex tasks from a GAMS model like identifying eigenvalues or the inverse of a matrix.

The tools in this category are CHOLESKY, CSDP, EIGENVECTOR, EIGENVALUE, GDXRANK, MessageReceiverWindow, INVERT, MCFILTER, SCENRED, and SCENRED2.

Other Tools

A collection of more exotic tools that can become handy in some some special circumstances. The tools in this category are ASK, CHK4UPD, ENDECRYPT, FINDTHISGAMS, GAMS Posix Utilities, MODEL2TEX, and ShellExecute. Most notably, the collection contains the tool MODEL2TEX to document the model algebra in LaTeX format.

List of Tools

The following table gives an alphabetically sorted list of all available tools.

Tool	Description
ASK	The utility can be used to get input from an user interactively.
CHK4UPD	Checks whether the user can update to a more recent GAMS version.
CHOLESKY	Calculates the Choleksy decomposition of a symmetric positive definite matrix.
CSDP	The semidefinite programming CSDP solver from COIN-OR. The communication with CSDP requires the setup of matrix data structures in a CSDP input file. In a sense a GAMS model functions as a matrix generator.
CSV2GDX	Reads a CSV file (comma separated values) and writes to a GDX file.
EIGENVALUE	Calculates eigenvalues of a symmetric matrix.
EIGENVECTOR	Calculates eigenvector of a symmetric matrix.
ENDECRYPT	A tool to encrypt and decrypt text files.
FINDTHISGAMS	Windows command line tool for modifying GAMS specific registry entries created by the GAMS installer.
GAMS IDE	Classic Integrated Development Environment.
GAMS STUDIO	Integrated Development Environment.
GDX2ACCESS	Converts GDX data to MS Access tables.
GDX2HAR	Translates files between GDX and HAR format.
GDX2SQLITE	Dumps the complete contents of a GDX file into a SQLite2 database. From Amsterdam Optimization Modeling Group.
GDX2VEDA	Translates a GDX file into the VEDA format.
GDX2XLS	Converts GDX data into a MS Excel spreadsheet.
GDXCOPY	Converts a GDX file into different GDX formats.
GDXDIFF	Compares the data of symbols with the same name, type and dimension in two GDX files and writes the differences to a third GDX file.
GDXDUMP	Writes scalars, sets and parameters (tables) to standard output formatted as a GAMS program with data statements.
GDXMERGE	Combines multiple GDX files into one file. Symbols with the same name, dimension and type are combined into a single symbol of a higher dimension. The added dimension has the file name of the combined file as its unique element.
GDXMRW	A suite of utilities to import/export data between GAMS and MATLAB and to call GAMS models from MATLAB and get results back into MATLAB.
GDXRANK	Reads one or more one dimensional parameters from a GDX file, sorts each parameter and writes the sorted indices as a one dimensional parameters to the output GDX file.
GDXRENAME	Replaces UEL strings in GDX files.
GDXRRW	An interface between GAMS and R. It includes functions to transfer data between GDX and R and a function to call GAMS from R.
GDXTROLL	Translates a GDX file into the TROLL format.
GDXVIEWER	Views and converts data contained in GDX files.
GDXXRW	Preferred utility to read and write MS Excel spreadsheet data.
GMSUNZIP	A copy of the decompression tool unzip from Info-ZIP prefixed with "gms" for clear identification.
GMSZIP	A copy of the compression and archiving tool zip from Info-ZIP prefixed with "gms" for clear identification.
HAR2GDX	Translates files between GDX and HAR format.
IDECMDS	Sends commands to the GAMSIDE.
INVERT	Inverts a matrix.
MCFILTER	Removal of duplicate and dominated points in a multi-criteria solution set.
MDB2GMS	Converts data from an MS Access database into a GAMS readable format.
MESSAGE RECEIVER WINDOW	A graphical tool that receives and displays Windows messages.
MODEL2TEX	Translates a GAMS model into LaTeX
MPS2GMS	Translates an MPS or LP file into an equivalent short generic GAMS program using a GDX file to store data.
MSAPPAVAIL	Checks if a MS Office Application is available.
POSIX	A collection of POSIX utilities which are usually available for Windows and the different Unix systems and therefore help to write platform independent scripts.
SCENRED	A tool for the reduction of scenarios that model random data processes of a stochastic program. From Humboldt-University Berlin.
SCENRED2	Scenred2 is a fundamental update of Scenred and offers a scenario tree construction algorithm. From Humboldt-University Berlin.
SHELLEXECUTE	Launches external programs from the command line.
SQL2GMS	Converts data from an SQL database into a GAMS readable format.
XLS2GMS	Converts spreadsheet data from a MS Excel spreadsheet into a GAMS readable format.
XLSDUMP	Writes all worksheets of a MS Excel workbook to a GDX file. Unlike gdxxrw, the program does not require that Excel is installed.
XLSTALK	Open/Close/Run macro in MS Excel.

Supported Platforms

	x86 64bit MS Windows	x86 64bit Linux	x86 64bit macOS
ASK	✔ *
CHK4UPD	✔	✔	✔
CHOLESKY	✔	✔	✔
CSDP	✔	✔	✔
CSV2GDX	✔	✔	✔
EIGENVALUE	✔	✔	✔
EIGENVECTOR	✔	✔	✔
ENDECRYPT	✔	✔	✔
FINDTHISGAMS	✔
GAMSIDE	✔ *
GAMSSTUDIO	✔	✔	✔
GDX2ACCESS	✔ *
GDX2HAR	✔ *
GDX2SQLITE	✔	✔	✔
GDX2VEDA	✔	✔	✔
GDX2XLS	✔ *
GDXCOPY	✔	✔	✔
GDXDIFF	✔	✔	✔
GDXDUMP	✔	✔	✔
GDXMERGE	✔	✔	✔
GDXMRW	✔	✔	✔
GDXRANK	✔	✔	✔
GDXRENAME	✔	✔	✔
GDXRRW	✔	✔	✔
GDXTROLL	✔	✔	✔
GDXVIEWER	✔ *
GDXXRW	✔ *
GMSUNZIP	✔	✔	✔
GMSZIP	✔	✔	✔
HAR2GDX	✔ *
IDECMDS	✔ *
INVERT	✔	✔	✔
MCFILTER	✔	✔	✔
MDB2GMS	✔ *
MSGRWIN	✔
MODEL2TEX	✔	✔	✔
MPS2GMS	✔	✔	✔
MSAPPAVAIL	✔ *
POSIX**	✔ *
SCENRED	✔	✔	✔
SCENRED2	✔	✔	✔
SHELLEXECUTE	✔ *
SQL2GMS	✔ *
XLS2GMS	✔ *
XLSDUMP	✔ *
XLSTALK	✔ *

* Note that the tool is 32 bit but runs fine on 64 bit Windows.
** awk, cat, cksum, cmp, comm, cp, cut, diff, expr, fold, gdate, grep, gsort, gunzip, gzip, head, join, make, mkdir, mv, od, paste, printf, rm, sed, sleep, tail, tar, tee, test, touch, tr, uniq, wc, xargs

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