Constraint Logic Programming

Abstract

The declarative paradigms constraint solving and logic programming are successfully merged in constraint logic programming. Integrating constraint solving techniques into logic programming increases expressibility, efficiency, and flexibility and therefore encourages declarative programming. Efficient special purpose algorithms, coming from mathematics, operations research, or artificial intelligence, can be embedded into the logic programming language. The logic programming language allows one to declaratively state the problem, which is solved by the underlying constraint solver. Besides being a high-level declarative interface to the constraint solver, the logic programming language allows the implementation of subproblems that do not fit into the constraint domain.