Sometimes you want to specify branching priorities or directions for integer variables to improve performance. Variables with higher priorities are branched on before variables with lower priorities. The branch direction is used to decide which branch to take first at each node. For more information, see the section Branching Priorities.

• Indicator record:
  

  Field1	Field2	Field3	Field4	Field5	Field6
  BRANCH	Blank	Blank	.	Blank	.

• Data record:
  

  Field1	Field2	Field3	Field4	Field5	Field6
  Branch direction	Blank	First column name	First column priority	Second column name	Second column priority

Notes:

1. Valid directions include UP (up branch), DN (down branch), RD (rounding) and CB (closest bound). If field1 is blank, the solver automatically decides the direction.

2. If field4 is missing, then the name defined in field3 is ignored. Similarly, if field6 is missing, then the name defined in field5 is ignored.

3. The priority value in field4 and field6 must be nonnegative. Zero is the lowest priority and is also the default.