Answer Set Programming
Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a form of declarative programming that is particularly suited for solving difficult search problems, many of which are NP-hard. It is based on the stable model (also known as answer set) semantics of logic programming. In ASP, problems are expressed in a way that solutions correspond to stable models, and specialized solvers are used to find these models.
Areas of application
- Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Operations Research
- Logic Programming
- Declarative Programming
Example
For example, ASP can be used to solve the traveling salesman problem, which is an NP-hard problem that involves finding the shortest possible route that visits a set of cities and returns to the starting point. By using ASP, we can represent the problem as a set of constraints and use specialized solvers to find a solution that corresponds to a stable model.