ASPIC: Proof-of-Concept ASP to Picat Transpiler

2026-07-22

AI Summary

This work proposes an efficient method for translating ASP-Core-2 programs into Picat code, enabling bidirectional integration between Answer Set Programming (ASP) and Picat. The approach, implemented in the prototype system ASPIC, extends ASP-Core-2 syntax to support finite-domain variables and nonlinear constraints, which are then transformed into Picat predicates. These predicates can either directly invoke Picat’s built-in SAT solver or be embedded within larger Picat programs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first framework achieving mutual embeddability of ASP and Picat, combining their respective modeling strengths. The translation preserves compatibility with clingo on benchmarks without positive cycles and efficiently handles hybrid problems involving both logical reasoning and finite-domain constraints, offering expressive power beyond existing systems such as clingcon.

Abstract

This article presents ASPIC, a new proof-of-concept library that converts extended syntax ASP-Core-2 programs to Picat predicates that can be solved right away with the integrated Picat SAT solver, or embedded in larger Picat programs ("ASP in Picat"), and that can in turn make use of various Picat predicates and functions ("Picat in ASP"). The first tests prove good compatibility with clingo, on programs lacking positive loops and when the special Picat features are not used. With the embedded Picat, it touches the application field of clingcon as well, by being able to efficiently model with both ASP atoms and with finite domain variables, but goes beyond that by being able to model also non-linear constraints.

Problem

• ASP
• Picat
• transpiler
• constraint solving
• knowledge representation

Innovation

• ASP-to-Picat transpilation
• hybrid ASP-Picat integration
• non-linear constraint modeling
• SAT-based solving
• extended ASP-Core-2