Towards a characterization of termination of logic programs

Author(s):  
B. Wang ◽  
R. K. Shyamasundar
Keyword(s):  

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 231-262
Author(s):  
Philippe Balbiani

The beauty of modal logics and their interest lie in their ability to represent such different intensional concepts as knowledge, time, obligation, provability in arithmetic, … according to the properties satisfied by the accessibility relations of their Kripke models (transitivity, reflexivity, symmetry, well-foundedness, …). The purpose of this paper is to study the ability of modal logics to represent the concepts of provability and unprovability in logic programming. The use of modal logic to study the semantics of logic programming with negation is defended with the help of a modal completion formula. This formula is a modal translation of Clack’s formula. It gives soundness and completeness proofs for the negation as failure rule. It offers a formal characterization of unprovability in logic programs. It characterizes as well its stratified semantics.



2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLAS SCHWIND ◽  
KATSUMI INOUE

AbstractWe address the problem of belief revision of logic programs (LPs), i.e., how to incorporate to a LP P a new LP Q. Based on the structure of SE interpretations, Delgrande et al. (2008. Proc. of the 11th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR'08), 411–421; 2013b. Proc. of the 12th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (LPNMR'13), 264–276) adapted the well-known AGM framework (Alchourrón et al. 1985. Journal of Symbolic Logic 50, 2, 510–530) to LP revision. They identified the rational behavior of LP revision and introduced some specific operators. In this paper, a constructive characterization of all rational LP revision operators is given in terms of orderings over propositional interpretations with some further conditions specific to SE interpretations. It provides an intuitive, complete procedure for the construction of all rational LP revision operators and makes easier the comprehension of their semantic and computational properties. We give a particular consideration to LPs of very general form, i.e., the generalized logic programs (GLPs). We show that every rational GLP revision operator is derived from a propositional revision operator satisfying the original AGM postulates. Interestingly, the further conditions specific to GLP revision are independent from the propositional revision operator on which a GLP revision operator is based. Taking advantage of our characterization result, we embed the GLP revision operators into structures of Boolean lattices, that allow us to bring to light some potential weaknesses in the adapted AGM postulates. To illustrate our claim, we introduce and characterize axiomatically two specific classes of (rational) GLP revision operators which arguably have a drastic behavior. We additionally consider two more restricted forms of LPs, i.e., the disjunctive logic programs (DLPs) and the normal logic programs (NLPs) and adapt our characterization result to disjunctive logic program and normal logic program revision operators.



2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 751-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
YI-DONG SHEN ◽  
DANNY DE SCHREYE ◽  
DEAN VOETS

AbstractWe present a heuristic framework for attacking the undecidable termination problem of logic programs, as an alternative to current termination/nontermination proof approaches. We introduce an idea of termination prediction, which predicts termination of a logic program in case that neither a termination nor a non-termination proof is applicable. We establish a necessary and sufficient characterization of infinite (generalized) SLDNF-derivations with arbitrary (concrete or moded) queries, and develop an algorithm that predicts termination of general logic programs with arbitrary nonfloundering queries. We have implemented a termination prediction tool and obtained quite satisfactory experimental results. Except for five programs which break the experiment time limit, our prediction is 100% correct for all 296 benchmark programs of the Termination Competition 2007, of which 18 programs cannot be proved by any of the existing state-of-the-art analyzers like AProVE07, NTI, Polytool, and TALP.



2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 171-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL FINK

AbstractDifferent notions of equivalence, such as the prominent notions of strong and uniform equivalence, have been studied in Answer-Set Programming, mainly for the purpose of identifying programs that can serve as substitutes without altering the semantics, for instance in program optimization. Such semantic comparisons are usually characterized by various selections of models in the logic of Here-and-There (HT). For uniform equivalence however, correct characterizations in terms of HT-models can only be obtained for finite theories, respectively programs. In this paper, we show that a selection of countermodels in HT captures uniform equivalence also for infinite theories. This result is turned into coherent characterizations of the different notions of equivalence by countermodels, as well as by a mixture of HT-models and countermodels (so-called equivalence interpretations). Moreover, we generalize the so-called notion of relativized hyperequivalence for programs to propositional theories, and apply the same methodology in order to obtain a semantic characterization which is amenable to infinite settings. This allows for a lifting of the results to first-order theories under a very general semantics given in terms of a quantified version of HT. We thus obtain a general framework for the study of various notions of equivalence for theories under answer-set semantics. Moreover, we prove an expedient property that allows for a simplified treatment of extended signatures, and provide further results for non-ground logic programs. In particular, uniform equivalence coincides under open and ordinary answer-set semantics, and for finite non-ground programs under these semantics, also the usual characterization of uniform equivalence in terms of maximal and total HT-models of the grounding is correct, even for infinite domains, when corresponding ground programs are infinite.





2019 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 989-1029
Author(s):  
Laurent Garcia ◽  
Claire Lefèvre ◽  
Igor Stéphan ◽  
Odile Papini ◽  
Éric Würbel

The paper deals with base revision for Answer Set Programming (ASP). Base revision in classical logic is done by the removal of formulas. Exploiting the non-monotonicity of ASP allows one to propose other revision strategies, namely addition strategy or removal and/or addition strategy. These strategies allow one to define families of rule-based revision operators. The paper presents a semantic characterization of these families of revision operators in terms of answer sets. This semantic characterization allows for equivalently considering the evolution of syntactic logic programs and the evolution of their semantic content. It then studies the logical properties of the proposed operators and gives complexity results.  



2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAURICIO OSORIO ◽  
JUAN A. NAVARRO ◽  
JOSÉ ARRAZOLA

We present some applications of intermediate logics in the field of Answer Set Programming (ASP). A brief, but comprehensive introduction to the answer set semantics, intuitionistic and other intermediate logics is given. Some equivalence notions and their applications are discussed. Some results on intermediate logics are shown, and applied later to prove properties of answer sets. A characterization of answer sets for logic programs with nested expressions is provided in terms of intuitionistic provability, generalizing a recent result given by Pearce. It is known that the answer set semantics for logic programs with nested expressions may select non-minimal models. Minimal models can be very important in some applications, therefore we studied them; in particular we obtain a characterization, in terms of intuitionistic logic, of answer sets which are also minimal models. We show that the logic G3 characterizes the notion of strong equivalence between programs under the semantic induced by these models. Finally we discuss possible applications and consequences of our results. They clearly state interesting links between ASP and intermediate logics, which might bring research in these two areas together.



2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 563-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIA-HUAI YOU ◽  
HENG ZHANG ◽  
YAN ZHANG

AbstractWe consider disjunctive logic programs without function symbols but with existential quantification in rule heads, under the semantics of general stable models. There are at least two interesting prospects in these programs. The first is that a program can be made more succinct by using existential variables, and the second is on the potential in representing defeasible ontological knowledge by these logic programs. This paper studies some of the properties of these programs. First, we show a simple yet intuitive definition of stable models for these programs that does not resort to second-order logic. Second, the stable models of these programs can be characterized by an extension of progression for disjunctive programs, which provides a native characterization of justification for stable models. We then study the decidability issue. While the stable model existence problem for safe disjunctive programs is decidable, with existential quantification allowed in rule heads the problem becomes undecidable. We identify an interesting decidable fragment by exploring a new notion of stratification over existential quantification.



Author(s):  
Tuan Quoc Nguyen ◽  
Katsumi Inoue ◽  
Chiaki Sakama

AbstractAlgebraic characterization of logic programs has received increasing attention in recent years. Researchers attempt to exploit connections between linear algebraic computation and symbolic computation to perform logical inference in large-scale knowledge bases. In this paper, we analyze the complexity of the linear algebraic methods for logic programs and propose further improvement by using sparse matrices to embed logic programs in vector spaces. We show its great power of computation in reaching the fixed point of the immediate consequence operator. In particular, performance for computing the least models of definite programs is dramatically improved using the sparse matrix representation. We also apply the method to the computation of stable models of normal programs, in which the guesses are associated with initial matrices, and verify its effect when there are small numbers of negation. These results show good enhancement in terms of performance for computing consequences of programs and depict the potential power of tensorized logic programs.



Author(s):  
FELICIDAD AGUADO ◽  
PEDRO CABALAR ◽  
MARTÍN DIÉGUEZ ◽  
GILBERTO PÉREZ ◽  
TORSTEN SCHAUB ◽  
...  

Abstract In this survey, we present an overview on (Modal) Temporal Logic Programming in view of its application to Knowledge Representation and Declarative Problem Solving. The syntax of this extension of logic programs is the result of combining usual rules with temporal modal operators, as in Linear-time Temporal Logic (LTL). In the paper, we focus on the main recent results of the non-monotonic formalism called Temporal Equilibrium Logic (TEL) that is defined for the full syntax of LTL but involves a model selection criterion based on Equilibrium Logic, a well known logical characterization of Answer Set Programming (ASP). As a result, we obtain a proper extension of the stable models semantics for the general case of temporal formulas in the syntax of LTL. We recall the basic definitions for TEL and its monotonic basis, the temporal logic of Here-and-There (THT), and study the differences between finite and infinite trace length. We also provide further useful results, such as the translation into other formalisms like Quantified Equilibrium Logic and Second-order LTL, and some techniques for computing temporal stable models based on automata constructions. In the remainder of the paper, we focus on practical aspects, defining a syntactic fragment called (modal) temporal logic programs closer to ASP, and explaining how this has been exploited in the construction of the solver telingo, a temporal extension of the well-known ASP solver clingo that uses its incremental solving capabilities.



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