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Debugging Is Explaining

  • Conference paper

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNAI,volume 7455)

Abstract

Debugging is a process of finding and reducing the number of bugs, or defects, in a program. A defect typically is detected because the program generates unexpected behaviour. In order to locate the cause of a defect, it therefore is essential to explain why this behaviour is generated. In this paper, we propose a new debugging approach for agent-oriented programming that exploits the structure and basic concepts that are used in logic-based agent programs for providing answers to some of such why questions. Our approach is based on the fact that the behaviour of an agent-oriented program can be traced back to basically two sources. First, agents derive their choice of action from their beliefs and goals - two fundamental programming concepts in agent-oriented programming. These folk psychological concepts provide reasons for doing something. Second, agent programs are rule-based programs and the evaluation of rules to a large extent determines the program’s behaviour.

Keywords

  • Agent Program
  • Execution Trace
  • Explanation Framework
  • Rule Instance
  • Agent Programming Language

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Hindriks, K.V. (2012). Debugging Is Explaining. In: Rahwan, I., Wobcke, W., Sen, S., Sugawara, T. (eds) PRIMA 2012: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7455. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32729-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32729-2_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32728-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32729-2

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