arXiv subjects

Gerard Ferrand

Publications and source records attributed to Gerard Ferrand.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2003

Towards declarative diagnosis of constraint programs over finite domains

The paper proposes a theoretical approach of the debugging of constraint programs based on a notion of explanation tree. The proposed approach is an attempt to adapt algorithmic debugging to constraint programming. In this theoretical framework for domain reduction, explanations are proof trees explaining value removals. These proof trees are defined by inductive definitions which express the removals of values as consequences of other value removals. Explanations may be considered as the essence of constraint programming. They are a declarative view of the computation trace. The diagnosis consists in locating an error in an explanation rooted by a symptom.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2000

Value Withdrawal Explanation in CSP

This work is devoted to constraint solving motivated by the debugging of constraint logic programs a la GNU-Prolog. The paper focuses only on the constraints. In this framework, constraint solving amounts to domain reduction. A computation is formalized by a chaotic iteration. The computed result is described as a closure. This model is well suited to the design of debugging notions and tools, for example failure explanations or error diagnosis. In this paper we detail an application of the model to an explanation of a value withdrawal in a domain. Some other works have already shown the interest of such a notion of explanation not only for failure analysis.

cs.SE↗