Stepping through an answer-set program
2011 (English)In: Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning: 11th International Conference, LPNMR 2011, Vancouver, Canada, May 16-19, 2011, Proceedings / [ed] J. P. Delgrande & W. Faber, Springer, 2011, p. 134-147Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
We introduce a framework for interactive stepping through an answer-set program as a means for debugging. In procedural languages, stepping is a widespread and effective debugging strategy. The idea is to gain insight into the behaviour of a program by executing statement by statement, following the program's control flow. Stepping has not been considered for answer-set programs so far, presumably because of their lack of a control flow. The framework we provide allows for stepwise constructing interpretations following the user's intuition on which rule instances to become active. That is, we do not impose any ordering on the rules but give the programmer the freedom to guide the stepping process. Due to simple syntactic restrictions, each step results in a state that guarantees stability of the intermediate interpretation. We present how stepping can be started from breakpoints as in conventional programming and discuss how the approach can be used for debugging using a running example.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer, 2011. p. 134-147
Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ISSN 0302-9743, E-ISSN 1611-3349 ; 6645
Keywords [en]
answer-set programming, debugging, program analysis, Break-points, Control flows, Gain insight, Procedural languages, Answer set, Answer set programming, Debugging strategies, Logic programming, User interfaces, Computer circuits, Computer debugging, Computer programming, Knowledge representation, Program debugging
National Category
Computer Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-63577DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-20895-9_13Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-79955757112ISBN: 9783642208942 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-63577DiVA, id: diva2:1838379
Conference
11th International Conference, LPNMR 2011, Vancouver, Canada, May 16-19, 2011
2024-02-162024-02-162024-02-16Bibliographically approved