Re: copy variables including their constraints

Thank you for your help!

> > Unfortunately, copy_term does not copy constraints,
> 
> Let's say "fortunately" it doesn't copy constraints :-)
> Don't forget that constraint networks are usually totally connected,
> so you would end up copying your whole constraint store every time.

If they are all connected, then this is what I need.  But I suspect a
misunderstanding here.  Maybe, I misinterpret the word "connected".  Let me
give an example what I mean with "magic_copy".  Hereby C(X,Y) stands for a
constraint between Variables X and Y:

Let us assume we have a constraint set with three constraints

C1(X,Z), C2(Y,Z), C3(X,R)

Now we want to "magically" copy variables Y and Z, ie get new variables Y2 and
Z2.  This would result in the constraint set

C1(X,Z), C2(Y,Z), C3(X,R), C1(X,Z2), C2(Y2,Z2).

In some sense, the original constraint set is connected - there is no
partitioning into several constraint sets with disjoint variable set.
Nevertheless, "magic_copy" duplicates only those constraints that share a
variable with the target variable set [Y, Z].  Note, that the other variables
stay the same.  

> 
> Ideally, of course, you would like to create some kind of projection
> of the constraints onto the variables that you copy. However,
> projection algorithms are only known for certain special forms
> of constraint sets, so this is not something the system can do
> automatically.

Can you hint me some literature? 

> I do not recommend using this seriously (for the reasons given above),
> but for a quick experiment you can try:
> 
> magic_copy(Orig, Copy) :-
> 	shelf_create(s(Orig),S),
> 	shelf_get(S, 1, Copy),
> 	shelf_abolish(S).

Hey, that seems to do exactly what I need.  Somehow, I didn't understand from
the manual pages of shelf_* that it copies constraints, too.  I thought it
copies similar to copy_term.

> If you can collect the constraints in that way, this is probably the
> best solution. You might not need to list all individual constraints,
> you just need one goal that sets them all up:
> 
> ?-  setup_cstr(Vars),
>     copy_term(Vars-setup_cstr(Vars), VarsCopy-GoalCopy),
>     call(GoalCopy),
>     ...

Ah, that is a sneak way of unifying some but not all variables of a term.
Prolog can be so beautiful ...

Uli


-- 
Ulrich Scholz

scholz@informatik.tu-darmstadt.de
http://www.intellektik.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/~scholz