The Resource Constrained Shortest Path Problem Implemented in a Lazy Functional Language

The resource constrained shortest path problem is an NP-hard problem for which many ingenious algorithms have been developed. These algorithms are usually implemented in FORTRAN or another imperative programming language. We have implemented some of the simpler algorithms in a lazy functional language. Benefits accrue in the software engineering of the implementations. Our implementations have been applied to a standard benchmark of data files, which is available from the Operational Research Library of Imperial College, London. The performance of the lazy functional implementations, even with the comparatively simple algorithms that we have used, is competitive with a reference FORTRAN implementation. Keywords: Resource constrained shortest path, lazy functional programming, dynamic programming, benchmarking. 1 Introduction The resource constrained shortest path problem (RCSP) is to find the shortest path in a network such that certain constraints are satisfied. We consider this an i..