# Abstract Solvers for Computing Cautious Consequences of ASP programs

## TL;DR

This paper introduces novel abstract solving techniques for cautious reasoning in Answer Set Programming, inspired by backbone computation in SAT, and demonstrates their effectiveness in ASP solvers.

## Contribution

The paper develops new abstract algorithms for cautious reasoning in ASP, linking them to backbone computation in SAT, and implements these in the WASP solver.

## Key findings

- Performance comparable to state-of-the-art solutions
- New algorithms improve cautious reasoning in ASP
- Formal connection between ASP cautious reasoning and SAT backbone computation

## Abstract

Abstract solvers are a method to formally analyze algorithms that have been profitably used for describing, comparing and composing solving techniques in various fields such as Propositional Satisfiability (SAT), Quantified SAT, Satisfiability Modulo Theories, Answer Set Programming (ASP), and Constraint ASP. In this paper, we design, implement and test novel abstract solutions for cautious reasoning tasks in ASP. We show how to improve the current abstract solvers for cautious reasoning in ASP with new techniques borrowed from backbone computation in SAT, in order to design new solving algorithms. By doing so, we also formally show that the algorithms for solving cautious reasoning tasks in ASP are strongly related to those for computing backbones of Boolean formulas. We implement some of the new solutions in the ASP solver WASP and show that their performance are comparable to state-of-the-art solutions on the benchmark problems from the past ASP Competitions. Under consideration for acceptance in TPLP.