General-purpose optimization wrapper function that calls other R tools for optimization, including the existing optim() function. optimx also tries to unify the calling sequence to allow a number of tools to use the same front-end. These include spg from the BB package, ucminf, nlm, and nlminb. Note that optim() itself allows Nelder–Mead, quasi-Newton and conjugate-gradient algorithms as well as box-constrained optimization via L-BFGS-B. Because SANN does not return a meaningful convergence code (conv), optimx() does not call the SANN method.
optimx provides a replacement and extension of the link{optim()} function to unify and streamline optimization capabilities in R for smooth, possibly box constrained functions of several or many parameters