A Meta-Programming Technique for Debugging Answer-Set Programs

Answer-Set Programming (ASP) is widely recognised as a viable tool for declarative problem solving. However, there is currently a lack of tools for developing answer-set programs. In particular, providing tools for debugging answer-set programs has recently been identified as a crucial prerequisite for a wider acceptance of ASP. In this paper, the authors introduce a meta-programming technique for debugging in ASP. The basic question they address is why interpretations expected to be answer sets are not answer sets of the program to debug. They, thus deal with finding semantical errors of programs. The explanations provided by the method are based on an intuitive scheme of errors that relies on a recent characterisation of the answer-set semantics.