Put Statement

Always interesting to see what modelers are struggling with. This does not always align with my experience.

I assume this tweet is about the PUT statement in GAMS. Of course I also have some ideas about this.

• The PUT syntax is modeled after the PUT in SAS. This is indeed syntax from an earlier era.
• A simpler Write/WriteLine would have been been sufficient for me in 100% of the cases I used PUT. I just don’t use most of the features of PUT.
• The format of the output file is of course under the control of the modeler. If the output does not look good, you should write better reports! You can format the output in whatever shape you want it to be.
• I don’t use PUT very often, but I have used it to produce Text, SQL, CSV, HTML and XML files. 
• In these days I use Excel very often as reporting tool. Many users of the results downstream are familiar with Excel and can do subsequent processing. No need for using PUT in this case.
• Reporting can be important for some projects. I am working right now on a project right now where the output of the model results looks like shown below. No PUT was involved in this.