Abstract

Existing libraries and languages for finite domain constraint programming have backtracking-based depth-first search built-in as the only inference engine. Exceptions are the languages claire, which supports the programming of backtracking-based engines, and Oz, which allows the programming of copying-based engines. This is achieved through language-specific constructs, which precludes the transfer of programmable inference engines to conventional languages. In this paper, the design of a finite domain library for the functional language ML is presented. The combination of several design concepts allows to program backtracking as well as copying-based engines. The design of the library is presented from first principles and provides a blueprint for a practical implementation in a functional or object-oriented setting. 1 Introduction Finite domain constraint problems are problems of assigning integer values to variables subject to arithmetic and symbolic constraints and possibly an obj...

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