Answer set programming

Not to be confused with Active Server Pages.

Answer set programming (ASP) is a form of declarative programming oriented towards difficult (primarily NP-hard) search problems. It is based on the stable model (answer set) semantics of logic programming. In ASP, search problems are reduced to computing stable models, and answer set solvers—programs for generating stable models—are used to perform search. The computational process employed in the design of many answer set solvers is an enhancement of the DPLL algorithm and, in principle, it always terminates (unlike Prolog query evaluation, which may lead to an infinite loop).

In a more general sense, ASP includes all applications of answer sets to knowledge representation and reasoning[1][2] and the use of Prolog-style query evaluation for solving problems arising in these applications.

  1. ^ Baral, Chitta (2003). Knowledge Representation, Reasoning and Declarative Problem Solving. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81802-5.
  2. ^ Gelfond, Michael (2008). "Answer sets". In van Harmelen, Frank; Lifschitz, Vladimir; Porter, Bruce (eds.). Handbook of Knowledge Representation. Elsevier. pp. 285–316. ISBN 978-0-08-055702-1. as PDF Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine