Solving constraint satisfaction problems containing vectors of unknown size

Abstract

Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are used to solve real-life problems with inherent structures that contain vectors for repeating sets of variables and constraints. Often, the structure of the problem is a part of the problem, since the number of elements in the vector is not known in advance. We propose a method to solve such problems, even when there is no maximal length provided. Our method is based on constructing a vector size CSP from the problem description, and solving it to get the number of elements in the vector. We then use the vector size to construct and solve a CSP that has a specific number of elements. Experimental results show that this method enables fast solving of problems that cannot be solved or even constructed by existing methods.