Module Control.AllSolutions

This module contains a collection of functions for obtaining lists of solutions to constraints. These operations are useful to encapsulate non-deterministic operations between I/O actions in order to connect the worlds of logic and functional programming and to avoid non-determinism failures on the I/O level.

In contrast the "old" concept of encapsulated search (which could be applied to any subexpression in a computation), the operations to encapsulate search in this module are I/O actions in order to avoid some anomalities in the old concept.

Summary of exported operations:

getAllValues
                  ::  a -> IO [a]

Gets all values of an expression (currently, via an incomplete depth-first strategy).

getOneValue
                  ::  a -> IO (Maybe a)

Gets one value of an expression (currently, via an incomplete left-to-right strategy).

getAllSolutions
                  ::  (a -> Bool) -> IO [a]

Gets all solutions to a constraint (currently, via an incomplete depth-first left-to-right strategy).

getOneSolution
                  ::  (a -> Bool) -> IO (Maybe a)

Gets one solution to a constraint (currently, via an incomplete left-to-right strategy).

getAllFailures
                  ::  a -> (a -> Bool) -> IO [a]

Returns a list of values that do not satisfy a given constraint.

getSearchTree
                  ::  [a] -> (b -> Bool) -> IO (SearchTree b a)

Computes a tree of solutions where the first argument determines the branching level of the tree.

Exported datatypes:

SearchTree

A search tree for representing search structures.

Constructors:

SearchBranch :: [(b,SearchTree a b)] -> SearchTree a b
Solutions :: [a] -> SearchTree a b

Exported operations:

getAllValues :: a -> IO [a]

Gets all values of an expression (currently, via an incomplete depth-first strategy). Conceptually, all values are computed on a copy of the expression, i.e., the evaluation of the expression does not share any results. Moreover, the evaluation suspends as long as the expression contains unbound variables.

getOneValue :: a -> IO (Maybe a)

Gets one value of an expression (currently, via an incomplete left-to-right strategy). Returns Nothing if the search space is finitely failed.

getAllSolutions :: (a -> Bool) -> IO [a]

Gets all solutions to a constraint (currently, via an incomplete depth-first left-to-right strategy). Conceptually, all solutions are computed on a copy of the constraint, i.e., the evaluation of the constraint does not share any results. Moreover, this evaluation suspends if the constraints contain unbound variables. Similar to Prolog's findall.

getOneSolution :: (a -> Bool) -> IO (Maybe a)

Gets one solution to a constraint (currently, via an incomplete left-to-right strategy). Returns Nothing if the search space is finitely failed.

getAllFailures :: a -> (a -> Bool) -> IO [a]

Returns a list of values that do not satisfy a given constraint.

Example call:: (getAllFailures x c)

Parameters:

x : an expression (a generator evaluable to various values)
c : a constraint that should not be satisfied

Returns:: A list of all values of e such that (c e) is not provable

getSearchTree :: [a] -> (b -> Bool) -> IO (SearchTree b a)

Computes a tree of solutions where the first argument determines the branching level of the tree. For each element in the list of the first argument, the search tree contains a branch node with a child tree for each value of this element. Moreover, evaluations of elements in the branch list are shared within corresponding subtrees.