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Modular Answer Set Programming as a Formal Specification Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2020

PEDRO CABALAR Open the ORCID record for PEDRO CABALAR [Opens in a new window] ,
JORGE FANDINNO Open the ORCID record for JORGE FANDINNO [Opens in a new window]  and
YULIYA LIERLER Open the ORCID record for YULIYA LIERLER [Opens in a new window]
PEDRO CABALAR
Affiliation:
University of Corunna, Spain (e-mail: cabalar@udc.es)
JORGE FANDINNO
Affiliation:
University of Potsdam, Germany (e-mail: fandinno@uni-potsdam.de)
YULIYA LIERLER
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska Omaha, USA (e-mail: ylierler@unomaha.edu)
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Abstract

In this paper, we study the problem of formal verification for Answer Set Programming (ASP), namely, obtaining a formal proof showing that the answer sets of a given (non-ground) logic program P correctly correspond to the solutions to the problem encoded by P, regardless of the problem instance. To this aim, we use a formal specification language based on ASP modules, so that each module can be proved to capture some informal aspect of the problem in an isolated way. This specification language relies on a novel definition of (possibly nested, first order) program modules that may incorporate local hidden atoms at different levels. Then, verifying the logic program P amounts to prove some kind of equivalence between P and its modular specification.

Keywords

Answer Set ProgrammingFormal SpecificationFormal VerificationModular Logic Programs
Type
Original Article
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 20 , Issue 5: 36th International Conference on Logic Programming Special Issue I , September 2020 , pp. 767 - 782
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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