Lookahead in smodels compared to local consistencies in CSP

Abstract

In answer set programming systems like Smodels and some SAT solvers, constraint propagation is carried out by a mechanism called lookahead. The question arises as what is the pruning power of lookahead, and how such pruning power fares in comparison with the consistency techniques in solving CSPs. In this paper, we study the pruning power of lookahead by relating it to local consistencies under two different encodings from CSPs to answer set programs. This leads to an understanding of how the search space is pruned in an answer set solver with lookahead for solving CSPs. On the other hand, lookahead as a general constraint propagation mechanism provides a uniform algorithm for enforcing a variety of local consistencies. We also study the impact on the search efficiency under these encodings. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.