Scenario name

Every sip file opens by naming its scenario. In our example it is:

scenario : Three Bank1
--

The grammar is:

scenario = scenario_name block_end
scenario_name = 'scenario : ' icaps_name EOL

The scenario : prefix is matched as one literal string, so the spacing is exact: the keyword scenario, a single space, a colon, then a single space before the name. scenario: Three Bank1 will not parse. It's draconian, but consistency makes files more readable.

The name itself is an icaps_name, a sequence of one or more words separated by single spaces or underscores with the first letter of the first word being uppercase. Note that Bank1 is fine — digits are allowed after the first character of a word.

Then the unindented -- separator closes the declaration.

Naming convention

A scenario name describes the starting situation the population sets up, since that is what distinguishes one scenario from another for the same domain. Three Bank1 sets up a building with three elevator banks. My convention is to name the file after the domain alias and the scenario, so Three Bank1 for the EVMAN domain lives in EVMAN_three_bank1.sip.

The name is carried through to the parser result as the name field of the returned Scenario, so a model debugger or execution log can report which population it is running. See Parser output.