We are pleased to announce the publication of our book “Constraint Solving and Planning with Picat” by Springer.
http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319258812
This book presents Picat as a modeling and solving language for two important classes of combinatorial problems: constraint satisfaction and planning.
Chapter 1 gives an overview of the Picat language and system. It also compares Picat to Prolog, Haskell, and Python, and gives tips for writing efficient Picat programs.
Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to constraint modeling. Chapter 2 introduces the basic built-in constraints in the common API of the three solver modules (cp, sat, and mip), and gives several simple example models that use these constraints. Chapter 3 describes the more sophisticated constraints in the API and gives advanced example models.
Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted to planning. Chapter 5 introduces depth-unbounded search predicates in the planner module, and gives models for several planning puzzles. Chapter 6 introduces depth-bounded search predicates in the planner module, and shows how domain knowledge and heuristics can be incorporated into planning models to improve the performance. Because planning is solved as a dynamic programming problem with tabling in Picat, a separate chapter (Chapter 4) is included to introduce the tabling feature of Picat.
A combinatorial problem can normally be modeled in different ways and solved by different solvers. The book is wrapped up with a chapter (Chapter 7) that gives several models for solving the Traveling Salesman Problem with different solvers, including CP, SAT, MIP, and tabled planning.
This book is useful for students, including undergraduate-level students, researchers, and practitioners, to learn the modeling techniques for Picat.
"The language Picat, subject of this book, is the culminating event of all these developments. The language is as declarative as Prolog, but it is more convenient than Prolog in many aspects. ... This book provides the perfect compendium to enter the fascinating universe of Picat." -- From Foreword by Agostino Dovier.
Neng-Fa Zhou, Håkan Kjellerstrand, and Jonathan Fruhman
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