Constraint Logic Programming using Eclipse

'... a valuable addition to the canon of CP texts. It provides a well-exampled introduction to ECLiPSe as its CP language.' Peter J. Stuckey, Theory and Practice of Logic Programming

'The principle strengths of the book are the clarity of the writing and the use of well chosen examples. The programs are very well written, with efficiency considerations often subtly included. After digesting the book, and trying out examples and exercises in ECLiPSe, a reader will come away with solid grasp of CP, and the flexibility of ECLiPSe.' Theory and Practice of Logic Programming

Krzysztof R. Apt received his PhD in 1974 in mathematical logic from the University of Warsaw in Poland. He is a senior researcher at CWI, Amsterdam and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of three other books: Verification of Sequential and Concurrent Programs (with E.-R. Olderog), From Logic Programming to Prolog, and Principles of Constraint Programming, and has published 50 journal articles and 15 book chapters. He is the founder and the first editor-in-chief of the ACM Transactions on Computational Logic, and past president of the Association for Logic Programming. He is a member of the Academia Europaea (Mathematics and Informatics Section). After completing a degree at Oxford in Mathematics and Philosophy, Mark Wallace joined the UK computer company ICL, who funded his PhD at Southampton University, and which was published as a book: Communicating with Databases in Natural Language. He has been involved in the ECLiPSe constraint programming language since its inception and has led several industrial research collaborations exploiting the power of constraint programming with ECLiPSe. He is currently involved in a major new constraint programming initiative funded by National ICT Australia (NICTA), and in the foundation of a Centre for Optimisation in Melbourne. He has published widely, chaired the annual constraint programming conference, and is an editor for three international journals.

Introduction; Part I. Logic Programming Paradigm: 1. Logic programming and pure Prolog; 2. A reconstruction of pure Prolog; Part II. Elements of Prolog: 3. Arithmetic in Prolog; 4. Control and meta-programming; 5. Manipulating structures; Part III. Programming with Passive Constraints: 6. Constraint programming: a primer; 7. Intermezzo: iteration in ECLiPSe; 8. Top-down search with passive constraints; 9. The suspend library; Part IV. Programming with Active Constraints: 10. Constraint propagation in ECLiPSe; 11. Top-down search with active constraints; 12. Optimisation with active constraints; 13. Constraints on reals; 14. Linear constraints over continuous and integer variables; Solutions to selected exercises; Bibliographic remarks; Bibliography; Index.