Document the input format for popl2012.

[match/match.git] / program / README

                        Proposal matcher implementation

                   By Matt McCutchen <matt@mattmccutchen.net>
             in collaboration with Samir Khuller <samir@cs.umd.edu>

TODO: There is probably more to say here about the program, even after we add
the paper about the algorithm/reduction.

Setup
-----

Requirements:
- GHC on your $PATH
- GHC "fgl" package

Compile with "make".

Interactive experimentation
---------------------------

"./run" starts GHCi with all of the important definitions of the proposal
matcher in scope.  This is good for interactive experimentation.

Batch front-end
---------------

./match is a front-end that reads an instance from stdin and prints the matching
to stdout.

Input: A tab-separated array with a header row followed by two rows per proposal
and a header column followed by one column per reviewer.  The header row
specifies the relative loads of the reviewers as integers.  The header column
specifies the number of reviews each proposal must receive, in the first of the
proposal's two rows.

The remainder of the array contains, for each (proposal, reviewer) pair, a
preference value (an integer from 100, best, to -99, worst, with -100 indicating
conflict of interest) and below it, an expertise value (an integer from 3, best,
to 0, worst).  The preference value may optionally be followed by a * to require
that that (proposal, reviewer) pair be matched in the output.  This way, if the
user obtains a matching and the reviewers start working and then minor changes
to the input are needed, the user can request a matching that still includes
most of the reviews already started.

See the example.in.

Reviewers and proposals are numbered from 0 in the order they appear in the
input.

Output: A tab-separated array.  Each row gives the reviewer number and proposal
number of a matched pair.