Package:
lang/lisp/code/ext/screamer/
Name:
SCREAMER
Summary:
Lisp.
Adds backtracking and constraint satisfaction to Common
Version:
3.12
Description:
Screamer is an extension of Common Lisp that adds support for
nondeterministic programming. Screamer consists of two levels. The
basic nondeterministic level adds support for backtracking and
undoable side effects. On top of this nondeterministic substrate,
Screamer provides a comprehensive constraint programming language in
which one can formulate and solve mixed systems of numeric and
symbolic constraints. Together, these two levels augment Common Lisp
with practically all of the functionality of both Prolog and
constraint logic programming languages such as CHiP and CLP(R).
Furthermore, Screamer is fully integrated with Common Lisp. Screamer
programs can coexist and interoperate with other extensions to Common
Lisp such as CLOS, CLIM and Iterate.
In several ways Screamer is more efficient than other implementations
of backtracking languages. First, Screamer code is transformed into
Common Lisp which can be compiled by the underlying Common Lisp
system. Many competing implementations of nondeterministic Lisp are
interpreters and thus are far less efficient than Screamer. Second,
the backtracking primitives require fairly low overhead in Screamer.
Finally, this overhead to support backtracking is only paid for those
portions of the program which use the backtracking primitives.
Deterministic portions of user programs pass through the
Screamer-to-Common-Lisp transformation unchanged. Since in practise,
only small portions of typical programs utilize the backtracking
primitives, Screamer can produce more efficient code than compilers
for languages in which backtracking is more pervasive.
The Screamer user-contributed code includes a pedagogical
implementation of the SNLP planning algorithm in Screamer and code to
add a layer on top of Screamer to permit the retraction of assertions.
Requires:
Ports:
Symbolics (Genera 8.1.1, 8.3)
Lucid CL 4.0.2, 4.1 (Sun SPARC), 4.1 (SGI MIPS), 4.0.1
(IBM RS/6000)
MCL 2.0, 2.0p2
Harlequin 3.0.3+ (Sun SPARC)
Allegro 4.1, 4.2beta (Sun SPARC), 4.1 (SGI MIPS)
Poplog 14.2 (Sun SPARC)
AKCL 1.605 (Sun SPARC)
It should run under any implementation of Common Lisp which
is
compliant with CLtL2 and with minor revision could be made
to
run under implementations compliant with CLtL1 or dpANS.
Origin:
ftp.ai.mit.edu:/pub/screamer.tar.Z
ftp.cis.upenn.edu:/pub/screamer.tar.Z
ftp.cis.upenn.edu:/pub/screamer-tools/
Copying:
mandatory
Use, copying, and distribution permitted, provided
reporting of bugs to Bug-Screamer@AI.MIT.EDU. Notify
Info-Screamer-Request@AI.MIT.EDU when you obtain a copy of
SCREAMER.
Updated:
Wed Jan 18 16:37:25 1995
CD-ROM:
Prime Time Freeware for AI, Issue 1-1
Bug Reports:
Bug-Screamer@AI.MIT.EDU
Mailing List: Info-Screamer@AI.MIT.EDU
(send subscription requests to Info-ScreamerRequest@AI.MIT.EDU)
Author(s):
Jeffrey Mark Siskind and David Allen McAllester.
Contact:
Jeffrey Mark Siskind, <qobi@ai.toronto.edu>
University of Toronto
Department of Computer Science Room LP290E
Toronto Ontario M5S 1A4 Canada
416/978-6114
http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/DCS/Personal/Siskind.html
David Allen McAllester, <dam@ai.mit.edu>
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
545 Technology Square Room NE43-412
Cambridge MA 02139
617/253-6599
Keywords:
Lisp!Extensions, SCREAMER, Nondeterminism, Backtracking, Code Walker,
Constraint Satisfaction, Authors!Siskind, Authors!McAllester, SNLP,
Planning, Retract
Contains:
???
See Also:
References:
Jeffrey Mark Siskind and David Allen McAllester, "Screamer: A Portable
Efficient Implementation of Nondeterministic Common Lisp", University
of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, Tech
Report IRCS-93-03, 1993. Available as the file ircs-93-03.ps in the
distribution. The code in this paper is included in screams.lisp.
[This paper describes the fundamentals of nondeterministic Common
Lisp.]
Jeffrey Mark Siskind and David Allen McAllester, "Nondeterministic
Lisp as a Substrate for Constraint Logic Programming", Proceedings of
the Eleventh National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-93),
July 1993. Available as the file aaai93.ps in the distribution.
[This paper describes the constraint package included with Screamer.]
screamer.ps is an outdated manual for Screamer.