When Do Bounds and Domain Propagation Lead to the Same Search Space

Christian Schulte, Peter J. Stuckey.

[pdf | ACM version | bibtex]

This paper explores the question of when two propagation-based constraint systems have the same behaviour, in terms of search space. We categorise the behaviour of domain and bounds propagators for primitive constraints, and provide theorems that allow us to determine propagation behaviours for conjunctions of constraints. We then show how we can use this to analyse CLP(FD) programs to determine when we can safely replace domain propagators by more efficient bounds propagators without increasing search space.

In: Harald Søndergaard, editor, Third ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming, Florence, Italy, pages 115-126. ACM Press, September, 2001.