“That is Illogical Captain! ” – The Debugging Support Toolspock for Answer-Set Programs: System Description ⋆

Abstract. Answer-set programming (ASP) is a logic programming paradigm for declarative problem solving which gained increasing importance during the last decade. However, so far hardly any tools exist supporting software engineers in developing answer-set programs, and there are no standard methodologies for handling unexpected outcomes of a program. Thus, writing answer-set programs is sometimes quite intricate, especially when large programs for real-world applications are required. In order to increase the usability of ASP, the development of appropriate debugging strategies is therefore vital. In this paper, we describe the systemspock, a debugging support tool for answer-set programs making use of ASP itself. The implemented techniques maintain the declarative nature of ASP within the debugging process and are independent from the actual computation of answer sets.