Decomposing metaheuristic operations

Non-exhaustive local search methods are fundamental tools in applied branches of computing such as operations research, and in other applications of optimisation. These problems have proven stubbornly resistant to attempts to nd generic meta-heuristic toolkits that are both expressive and computationally e cient for the large problem spaces involved. This paper complements recent work on functional abstractions for local search by examining three fundamental operations on the states that characterise allowable and/or intermediate solutions. We describe how three fundamental operations are related, and how these can be implemented e ectively as part of a functional local search library.