The Genetic Algorithm Utility Library (or, GAUL for short) is a flexible programming library designed to aid in the development of applications that use genetic, or evolutionary, algorithms.

GAUL provides data structures and functions for manipulation and handling of the data required for serial and parallel evolutionary algorithms.

Additional stochastic algorithms are provided for comparison to the genetic algorithms. Much of the functionality is also available through a simple S-Lang interface.

Here are some key features of "GAUL":

￭ Darwinian, Lamarckian or Baldwinian evolutionary schemes.
￭ Both steady-state and generation-based GAs included.
￭ The island model of evolution is available.
￭ Chromosome datatype agnostic. A selection of common chromosome types are built-in.
￭ Includes most of the usual crossover, mutation and selection operators.
￭ Allows user-defined crossover, mutation, selection, adaptation and replacement operators.
￭ Availability of multiple chromosome genomes.
￭ Full support for multiple, simultaneously evolved, populations.
￭ Choice of high-level or low-level interface functions.
￭ Additional optimisation algorithms are built-in for local optimisation or comparative purposes:
￭ Hill-climbing.
￭ Tabu Search.
￭ Simulated Annealling.
￭ Simplex Search.
￭ Steepest Ascents.
￭ Deterministic Crowding.
￭ Differential Evolution.
￭ Trivial to extend using external code via the built-in code hooks.
￭ May be driven by, or extended by, simple yet powerful S-Lang scripts.
￭ Support for multiprocessor calculations on various architectures:
￭ MPI
￭ OpenMP 2.0
￭ pthreads
￭ forked-process model
￭ Written using highly portable C code.
￭ Distributed with a large set of example programs.
￭ Available as a free download, with full source code.