Dear list: Being a bit unsatisfied with global optimization approaches in R such as "SANN" (in 'optim') or DEoptim, I looked for alternatives on the Web, such as PSwarm <http://www.norg.uminho.pt/aivaz/pswarm/> or PIKAIA. There is an R interface to PSwarm (version 1.4) on its home page which I was not able to make run under Windows, getting the error message "Error: SET_VECTOR_ELT() can only be applied to a 'list', not a 'character'" when running the example. Therefore my questions: - Has someone successfully tried out PSwarm with R ? - Are there any experiences with PSwarm in general, that is could you find solutions with PSwarm that you did not find with another GA or with Rdonlp2, for example ? Regards Hans Werner