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onlineSPARC: A Programming Environment for Answer Set Programming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2018

ELIAS MARCOPOULOS  and
YUANLIN ZHANG
ELIAS MARCOPOULOS
Affiliation:
Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA (e-mail: emarcopoulos@gmail.com)
YUANLIN ZHANG
Affiliation:
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA (e-mail: y.zhang@ttu.edu)
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Abstract

Recent progress in logic programming (e.g. the development of the answer set programming (ASP) paradigm) has made it possible to teach it to general undergraduate and even middle/high school students. Given the limited exposure of these students to computer science, the complexity of downloading, installing, and using tools for writing logic programs could be a major barrier for logic programming to reach a much wider audience. We developed onlineSPARC, an online ASP environment with a self-contained file system and a simple interface. It allows users to type/edit logic programs and perform several tasks over programs, including asking a query to a program, getting the answer sets of a program, and producing a drawing/animation based on the answer sets of a program.

Keywords

CS educationlogic programminganswer set programmingintegrated development environmentvisualization
Type
Original Article
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 19 , Special Issue 2: User-Oriented Logic Programming and Reasoning Paradigms , March 2019 , pp. 262 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

The authors were partially supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. CNS-1359359). We thank Christian Reotutar, Evgenii Balai, Mbathio Diagne, Peter Lee, Maede Rayatidamavandi, Crisel Suarez, Edward Wertz, and Shao-Lon Yeh for their contribution to the implementation of the environment. Christian Reotutar also contributed to the early preparation of this paper. We thank Michael Gelfond and Yinan Zhang for their input and help. We thank the anonymous reviewers whose feedback helps to improve the quality of this paper as well as that of onlineSPARC.

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