Abstract
We study in this paper the use of consistency techniques and local propagation methods, originally developed for constraints over finite domains, for solving boolean constraints in Constraint Logic Programming (CLP). To this aim, we first present a boolean CLP language clp(B/FD) built upon a CLP language over finite domains clp(FD) which uses a propagation-based constraint solver. It is based on a single primitive constraint which allows the boolean solver to be encoded at a low level. The boolean solver obtained in this way is both very simple and very efficient: on average it is eight times faster than the CHIP propagation-based boolean solver, i.e. nearly an order of magnitude faster, and infinitely better than the CHIP boolean unification solver. It also performs on average several times faster than special-purpose stand-alone boolean solvers. We then present in a second time several simplifications of the above approach, leading to the design of a very simple and compact dedicated boolean solver. This solver can be implemented in a WAM-based logical engine with a minimal extension limited to four new abstract instructions. This clp(B) system provides a further factor two speedup w.r.t. clp(B/FD).
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Codognet, P., Diaz, D. A simple and efficient boolean solver for Constraint Logic Programming. J Autom Reasoning 17, 97–128 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00247670
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00247670