Stepwise debugging of answer-set programs

DOI10.1017/S1471068417000217MaRDI QIDQ4603428zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Johannes Oetsch, Jörg Pührer, Hans Tompits

Publication date 20 February 2018

Published in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.06564

zbMATH Keywords

debugginganswer-set programmingprogram analysisstepping

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Logic programming (68N17)

Abstract: We introduce a stepping methodology for answer-set programming (ASP) that allows for debugging answer-set programs and is based on the stepwise application of rules. Similar to debugging in imperative languages, where the behaviour of a program is observed during a step-by-step execution, stepping for ASP allows for observing the effects that rule applications have in the computation of an answer set. While the approach is inspired from debugging in imperative programming, it is conceptually different to stepping in other paradigms due to non-determinism and declarativity that are inherent to ASP. In particular, unlike statements in an imperative program that are executed following a strict control flow, there is no predetermined order in which to consider rules in ASP during a computation. In our approach, the user is free to decide which rule to consider active in the next step following his or her intuition. This way, one can focus on interesting parts of the debugging search space. Bugs are detected during stepping by revealing differences between the actual semantics of the program and the expectations of the user. As a solid formal basis for stepping, we develop a framework of computations for answer-set programs. For fully supporting different solver languages, we build our framework on an abstract ASP language that is sufficiently general to capture different solver languages. To this end, we make use of abstract constraints as an established abstraction for popular language constructs such as aggregates. Stepping has been implemented in SeaLion, an integrated development environment for ASP. We illustrate stepping using an example scenario and discuss the stepping plugin of SeaLion. Moreover, we elaborate on methodological aspects and the embedding of stepping in the ASP development process.

Recommendations

• Stepping through an answer-set program
• Interactive debugging of non-ground ASP programs
• Debugging ASP Programs by Means of ASP
• Debugging non-ground ASP programs: technique and graphical tools
• Catching the Ouroboros: on debugging non-ground answer-set programs

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Cited in

(13)

• Justifications for Description Logic Knowledge Bases Under the Fixed-Domain Semantics
• Stepwise debugging of description-logic programs
• Witnesses for Answer Sets of Logic Programs
• Debugging non-ground ASP programs with choice rules, cardinality and weight constraints
• Debugging ASP Programs by Means of ASP
• Towards causality-based conflict resolution in answer set programs
• Debugging non-ground ASP programs: technique and graphical tools
• Answering the ``why in answer set programming -- a survey of explanation approaches
• Interactive debugging of non-ground ASP programs
• Stepping through an answer-set program
• Catching the Ouroboros: on debugging non-ground answer-set programs
• Introduction to the TPLP Special Issue on User-oriented Logic Programming and Reasoning Paradigms
• Contrastive explanations for answer-set programs

Describes a project that uses

Uses Software

• SeaLion

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