Non-Deterministic Lisp with Dependency-directed Backtracking

Ramin Zabih, David A. McAllester, David Chapman

Abstract: Extending functional Lisp with McCarthy's non-det erministic operator AMB yields a language which can concisely express search problems. Dependency-directed backtracking is a powerful search strategy. We describe a non-deterministic Lisp dialect called SCHEMER and show that it can provide automatic dependency-directed backtracking. The resulting language provides a convenient interface to this efficient backtracking strategy.