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Constraint Propagation and Explanation over Novel Types by Abstract Compilation

Authors Graeme Gange, Peter J. Stuckey

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Graeme Gange
Peter J. Stuckey

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Graeme Gange and Peter J. Stuckey. Constraint Propagation and Explanation over Novel Types by Abstract Compilation. In Technical Communications of the 32nd International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2016). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 52, pp. 13:1-13:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2016)
https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ICLP.2016.13

Abstract

The appeal of constraint programming (CP) lies in compositionality – the ability to mix and match constraints as needed. However, this flexibility typically does not extend to the types of variables. Solvers usually support only a small set of pre-defined variable types, and extending this is not typically a simple exercise: not only must the solver engine be updated, but then the library of supported constraints must be re-implemented to support the new type. In this paper, we attempt to ease this second step. We describe a system for automatically deriving a native-code implementation of a global constraint (over novel variable types) from a declarative specification, complete with the ability to explain its propagation, a requirement if we want to make use of modern lazy clause generation CP solvers. We demonstrate this approach by adding support for wrapped-integer variables to chuffed, a lazy clause generation CP solver.
Keywords
  • constraint programming
  • program synthesis
  • program analysis

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