# ASP-FZN: A Translation-based Constraint Answer Set Solver

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22774 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22774/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Multi-shot ASP solving with clingo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09811/) (2017)
- [How to build your own ASP-based system?!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06692/) (2020)
- [Clingo goes Linear Constraints over Reals and Integers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.04053/) (2017)
- [Clingcon: The Next Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.04569/) (2017)
- [Constraint Answer Set Programming: Integrational and Translational (or SMT-based) Approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08252/) (2021)
- [An ASP semantics for Constraints involving Conditional Aggregates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06911/) (2020)
- [Answer-Set Programming for Lexicographical Makespan Optimisation in Parallel Machine Scheduling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09077/) (2022)
- [Routing and Scheduling in Answer Set Programming applied to Multi-Agent Path Finding: Preliminary Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12153/) (2024)
- [Generalizing Level Ranking Constraints for Monotone and Convex Aggregates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15888/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present the solver asp-fzn for Constraint Answer Set Programming (CASP), which extends ASP with linear constraints. Our approach is based on translating CASP programs into the solver-independent FlatZinc language that supports several Constraint Programming and Integer Programming backend solvers. Our solver supports a rich language of linear constraints, including some common global constraints. As for evaluation, we show that asp-fzn is competitive with state-of-the-art ASP solvers on benchmarks taken from past ASP competitions. Furthermore, we evaluate it on several CASP problems from the literature and compare its performance with clingcon, which is a prominent CASP solver that supports most of the asp-fzn language. The performance of asp-fzn is very promising as it is already competitive on plain ASP and even outperforms clingcon on some CASP benchmarks.