139 research outputs found
Automatic Generation of CHR Constraint Solvers
In this paper, we present a framework for automatic generation of CHR solvers
given the logical specification of the constraints. This approach takes
advantage of the power of tabled resolution for constraint logic programming,
in order to check the validity of the rules. Compared to previous works where
different methods for automatic generation of constraint solvers have been
proposed, our approach enables the generation of more expressive rules (even
recursive and splitting rules) that can be used directly as CHR solvers.Comment: to be published in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, 16
pages, 2 figure
Classes of Terminating Logic Programs
Termination of logic programs depends critically on the selection rule, i.e.
the rule that determines which atom is selected in each resolution step. In
this article, we classify programs (and queries) according to the selection
rules for which they terminate. This is a survey and unified view on different
approaches in the literature. For each class, we present a sufficient, for most
classes even necessary, criterion for determining that a program is in that
class. We study six classes: a program strongly terminates if it terminates for
all selection rules; a program input terminates if it terminates for selection
rules which only select atoms that are sufficiently instantiated in their input
positions, so that these arguments do not get instantiated any further by the
unification; a program local delay terminates if it terminates for local
selection rules which only select atoms that are bounded w.r.t. an appropriate
level mapping; a program left-terminates if it terminates for the usual
left-to-right selection rule; a program exists-terminates if there exists a
selection rule for which it terminates; finally, a program has bounded
nondeterminism if it only has finitely many refutations. We propose a
semantics-preserving transformation from programs with bounded nondeterminism
into strongly terminating programs. Moreover, by unifying different formalisms
and making appropriate assumptions, we are able to establish a formal hierarchy
between the different classes.Comment: 50 pages. The following mistake was corrected: In figure 5, the first
clause for insert was insert([],X,[X]
Practical Run-time Checking via Unobtrusive Property Caching
The use of annotations, referred to as assertions or contracts, to describe
program properties for which run-time tests are to be generated, has become
frequent in dynamic programing languages. However, the frameworks proposed to
support such run-time testing generally incur high time and/or space overheads
over standard program execution. We present an approach for reducing this
overhead that is based on the use of memoization to cache intermediate results
of check evaluation, avoiding repeated checking of previously verified
properties. Compared to approaches that reduce checking frequency, our proposal
has the advantage of being exhaustive (i.e., all tests are checked at all
points) while still being much more efficient than standard run-time checking.
Compared to the limited previous work on memoization, it performs the task
without requiring modifications to data structure representation or checking
code. While the approach is general and system-independent, we present it for
concreteness in the context of the Ciao run-time checking framework, which
allows us to provide an operational semantics with checks and caching. We also
report on a prototype implementation and provide some experimental results that
support that using a relatively small cache leads to significant decreases in
run-time checking overhead.Comment: 30 pages, 1 table, 170 figures; added appendix with plots; To appear
in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP), Proceedings of ICLP 201
Logic Programming Applications: What Are the Abstractions and Implementations?
This article presents an overview of applications of logic programming,
classifying them based on the abstractions and implementations of logic
languages that support the applications. The three key abstractions are join,
recursion, and constraint. Their essential implementations are for-loops, fixed
points, and backtracking, respectively. The corresponding kinds of applications
are database queries, inductive analysis, and combinatorial search,
respectively. We also discuss language extensions and programming paradigms,
summarize example application problems by application areas, and touch on
example systems that support variants of the abstractions with different
implementations
UpMax: User Partitioning for MaxSAT
It has been shown that Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT) problem instances can be effectively solved by partitioning the set of soft clauses into several disjoint sets. The partitioning methods can be based on clause weights (e.g., stratification) or based on graph representations of the formula. Afterwards, a merge procedure is applied to guarantee that an optimal solution is found.
This paper proposes a new framework called UpMax that decouples the partitioning procedure from the MaxSAT solving algorithms. As a result, new partitioning procedures can be defined independently of the MaxSAT algorithm to be used. Moreover, this decoupling also allows users that build new MaxSAT formulas to propose partition schemes based on knowledge of the problem to be solved. We illustrate this approach using several problems and show that partitioning has a large impact on the performance of unsatisfiability-based MaxSAT algorithms
An overview of ciao and its design philosophy
We provide an overall description of the Ciao multiparadigm programming system emphasizing some of the novel aspects and motivations behind its design and implementation. An important aspect of Ciao is that, in addition to supporting logic programming (and, in particular, Prolog), it provides the programmer with a large number of useful features from different programming paradigms and styles and that the use of each of these features (including those of Prolog) can be turned on and off at will for each program module. Thus,
a given module may be using, e.g., higher order functions and constraints, while another module may be using assignment, predicates, Prolog meta-programming, and concurrency. Furthermore, the language is designed to be extensible in a simple and modular way. Another important aspect of Ciao is its programming environment, which provides a powerful preprocessor (with an associated assertion language) capable of statically finding non-trivial bugs, verifying that programs comply with specifications, and performing many types of optimizations (including automatic parallelization). Such optimizations produce code that is highly competitive with other dynamic languages or, with the (experimental) optimizing compiler, even that of static languages, all while retaining the flexibility and interactive development of a dynamic language. This compilation architecture supports modularity and separate compilation throughout. The environment also includes a powerful autodocumenter and a unit testing framework, both closely integrated with the assertion system. The paper provides an informal overview of the language and program development environment. It aims at illustrating the design philosophy rather than at being exhaustive, which would be impossible in a single journal paper, pointing instead to previous Ciao literature
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