Constraint-logic programming

Constraint-logic programming is like playing a game of detective. Imagine you have a mystery to solve and a set of clues to help you solve it. But the clues aren't straightforward, they're more like puzzles - they might contradict each other or leave some things uncertain. That's where constraint-logic programming comes in.

First, you have to take all the clues and turn them into a set of rules. These rules help you narrow down the possibilities of what can be true and what can't. For example, if one clue says that the culprit has black hair and another clue says that the culprit has blonde hair, you know that one of those clues must be wrong (or that there are two culprits!). These rules are called "constraints".

Now comes the fun part - applying these constraints to the different possibilities. You start with a big list of all the possible solutions, and you use the constraints to eliminate the ones that don't make sense. For example, if one constraint says that the culprit is left-handed and another constraint says that the culprit used their right hand to leave a clue, you can immediately eliminate all the suspects who are right-handed.

You keep applying these constraints and eliminating impossible solutions until you're left with only one possibility - the solution to the mystery! Constraint-logic programming is like a really smart detective game that uses puzzles to help you solve problems.