Abstract

. We present a novel and uniform technique for normal logic program declarative error diagnosis. We lay down the foundations on a general approach to diagnosis using logic programming, and bring out the close relationship between debugging and fault--finding. Diagnostic debugging can be enacted by contradiction removal methods. It relies on a simple program transformation to provide a contradiction removal approach to debugging, based on revising the assumptions about predicates' correctness and completeness. The contradiction removal method is justified in turn in terms of well-- founded semantics. The loop detection properties of well--founded semantics will allow in the future for a declarative treatment of otherwise endless derivations. The debugging of programs under well--founded semantics with explict negation is also foreseen. Here, we apply our techniques to finite SLDNF derivations, whose meaning coincides with the well--founded model, for which our contradiction removal meth...

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