Removing Redundancy from Answer Set Programs

摘要

In answer set programming, ground programs are used as intermediate representations of logic programs for which answer sets are computed. It is typical that such programs contain many redundant rules-increasing the length of the program unnecessarily. In this article, we address redundancy of rules in answer set programs, and in particular, in program modules that are used as components of programs. To this end, we provide an exact semantical characterization of redundancy and present a translation-based method for detecting redundant rules. A prototype implementation, the modular optimizer (MODOPT), has been developed in the context of the smodels system. In the experimental part, we study the effects of modular optimization on lengths and run times of programs.