Abstract
We use a finite state (FSA) construction approach to address the problem of propositional satisfiability (SAT). We use a very simple translation from formulas in conjunctive normal form (CNF) to regular expressions and use regular expressions to construct an FSA. As a consequence of the FSA construction, we obtain an ALL-SAT solver and model counter. We compare how several variable ordering (state ordering) heuristics affect the running time of the FSA construction. We also present a strategy for clause ordering (automata composition). We compare the running time of state-of-the-art model counters, BDD based sat solvers and we show that this FSA approach obtains state-of-the-art performance on some hard unsatisfiable benchmarks. This work brings up many questions on the possible use of automata to address SAT.
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Castaño, J.M., Castaño, R. (2011). Variable and Clause Ordering in an FSA Approach to Propositional Satisfiability. In: Bouchou-Markhoff, B., Caron, P., Champarnaud, JM., Maurel, D. (eds) Implementation and Application of Automata. CIAA 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6807. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22256-6_8
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