Oz and Mozart Users Mailing List

Re: Distribute Global Variables


From: Denys Duchier (Denys.Duchier@ps.uni-sb.de)
Date: Tue Feb 26 2002 - 11:01:52 CET


c2s.computer@interbusiness.it (Gianni Alberti) writes:

> I like to know what is wrong in the following program:
> [...]
> The difference is that I want to use a global variable for distribution : what is my fault ?

The problem is precisely that you have global variables in your search
problem. Suppose you have global boolean FD variable X and in space S
you speculatively constrain X=0. Is S a solution? Well, the answer
is that you can't know that yet because X remains globally
undetermined. Suppose you subsequently decided to add the global
constraint X=1, then S would become inconsistent, i.e. failed.

In such a case, we say that S is not `stable': it suspends on a global
variable. We can only decide that S is a solution or not when
sufficient global information becomes available to decide whether the
local constraints on global variables are entailed or disentailed by
the global constraints.

In a search problem, all the variables of your CSP must be local
variables.

Cheers,

-- 
Dr. Denys Duchier			Denys.Duchier@ps.uni-sb.de
Forschungsbereich Programmiersysteme	(Programming Systems Lab)
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Geb. 45	http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier
Postfach 15 11 50			Phone: +49 681 302 5618
66041 Saarbruecken, Germany		Fax:   +49 681 302 5615
-
Please send submissions to users@mozart-oz.org
and administriva mail to users-request@mozart-oz.org.
The Mozart Oz web site is at http://www.mozart-oz.org/.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29.