The Essence of Constraint Propagation

Abstract

We show that several constraint propagation algorithms (also called (local) consistency, consistency enforcing, Waltz, filtering or narrowing algorithms) are instances of algorithms that deal with chaotic iteration. To this end we propose a simple abstract framework that allows us to classify and compare these algorithms and to establish in a uniform way their basic properties.

To appear in Theoretical Computer Science in the special issue devoted to the 24th ICALP conference (Bologna 1997)