FOLASP : FO(·) as Input Language for Answer Set Solvers

• Published in: Theory and practice of logic programming 2021-11, Vol.21 (6), p.785-801
• Main Authors: VAN DESSEL, KYLIAN, DEVRIENDT, JO, VENNEKENS, JOOST
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1471-0684; 1475-3081
• DOI: 10.1017/S1471068421000351

Technological progress in Answer Set Programming (ASP) has been stimulated by the use of common standards, such as the ASP-Core-2 language. While ASP has its roots in nonmonotonic reasoning, efforts have also been made to reconcile ASP with classical first-order (FO) logic. This has resulted in the development of FO(·), an expressive extension of FO, which allows ASP-like problem solving in a purely classical setting. This language may be more accessible to domain experts already familiar with FO and may be easier to combine with other formalisms that are based on classical logic. It is supported by the IDP inference system, which has successfully competed in a number of ASP competitions. Here, however, technological progress has been hampered by the limited number of systems that are available for FO(·). In this paper, we aim to address this gap by means of a translation tool that transforms an FO(·) specification into ASP-Core-2, thereby allowing ASP-Core-2 solvers to be used as solvers for FO(·) as well. We present experimental results to show that the resulting combination of our translation with an off-the-shelf ASP solver is competitive with the IDP system as a way of solving problems formulated in FO(·).