Constraint programming: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:21, 6 September 2005

Revision as of 01:03, 25 September 2005

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'''Constraint programming''' is a [[programming paradigm]] in which a set of [[constraint]]s that a solution must meet are specified rather than set of steps to obtain such a solution.

Constraint programming is related to [[logic programming]] and, since both are [[Turing-complete]], any logic program can be translated into an equivalent constraint program and ''vice versa''. This is sometimes useful in practice, since a constraint solving program may find an answer faster than a logic derivation program, and it might be desirable to perform this [[translation]] before executing a logic program.

The difference between the two is largely in their styles and approaches to modeling the world. Some problems are more natural (and thus, simpler) to write as logic programs, while some are more natural to write as constraint programs.

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*Mixed domains, involving two or more of the above

Constraint laguageslanguages are typically embedded in a host language. The first host language used was a [[logic programming|logic language]] ([[Prolog]]), so the field was initially called ''Constraint Logic Programming''. The two paradigms share many important features, like logical variables (i.e., once a variable is assigned a value, it cannot be changed), [[backtracking]]. Nowadays, most [[Prolog]] implementations include one or more libraries for constraint logic programming.

Some popular constraint languages are:

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[[de:Constraintprogrammierung]]

[[fr:Programmation par contraintes]]

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