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Soft Constraint Logic Programming and Generalized Shortest Path Problems

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Abstract

In this paper we study the relationship between Constraint Programming (CP) and Shortest Path (SP) problems. In particular, we show that classical, multicriteria, partially ordered, and modality-based SP problems can be naturally modeled and solved within the Soft Constraint Logic Programming (SCLP) framework, where logic programming is coupled with soft constraints. In this way we provide this large class of SP problems with a high-level and declarative linguistic support whose semantics takes care of both finding the cost of the shortest path(s) and also of actually finding the path(s). On the other hand, some efficient algorithms for certain classes of SP problems can be exploited to provide some classes of SCLP programs with an efficient way to compute their semantics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Corso Italia 40, 56125, Pisa, Italy

    Stefano Bistarelli & Ugo Montanari

  2. Dipartimento di Matematica Pura ed Applicata, Università di Padova, Via Belzoni 7, 35131, Padova, Italy

    Francesca Rossi

Authors
  1. Stefano Bistarelli
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  2. Ugo Montanari
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  3. Francesca Rossi
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Bistarelli, S., Montanari, U. & Rossi, F. Soft Constraint Logic Programming and Generalized Shortest Path Problems. Journal of Heuristics 8, 25–41 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013609600697

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013609600697

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