README

(ns clojure2minizinc.examples
  (:require [clojure2minizinc.core :as mz]))  

(mz/minizinc 
   (mz/clj2mnz
    (let [a (mz/variable (mz/-- -1 1)) 
          b (mz/variable (mz/-- -1 1))]
      (mz/constraint (mz/!= a b))
      (mz/solve :satisfy)
      (mz/output-map {:a a :b b})))
   :num-solutions 3
   ;; :all-solutions? true
   )

Results in ({:a 0, :b -1} {:a 1, :b -1} {:a -1, :b 0}).

Generates in the background this MiniZinc code and calls solver with it

TODO: add code

Note that this library overwrites many standard Clojure functions. You may want to use the library with a namespace prefix as in the example above.

More examples are shown in the tutorial.

In the Clojure community there already exists an interest in Constraint Programming (and the related Logic Programming paradigm), and solvers have been developed for Clojure.

core.logic implements logic and constraint programming facilities from scratch directly in Clojure. More specifically, it implements miniKanren and some of its extensions, e.g., cKanren for Constraint Logic Programming. For example, according to the documentation of core.logic, it currently implements about 10 constraints on integers (arithmetic operations, comparisons, and the global constraint distinct).

By contrast, clojure2minizinc provides an interface to a range of existing state-of-the-art constraint solvers. For example, in addition to constraints over integers (and many more constraints), it supports constraints over floats, sets, and reified constraints (i.e., the truth value of constraints can in turned be constrained, e.g., by logic relations such as implication or equivalence). Also, compared with the classical approach of Constraint Logic Programming implemented by cKanren, over the last twenty years the Constraint Programming community developed many techniques to greatly speed up the search process, which are implemented in state-of-the-art constraint solvers.

However, MiniZinc is not a Logic Programming language. For example, it does not provide unification of arbitrary terms (in contrast to equality constraints).

A project with similar goals as clojure2minizinc is libmzn, which provides a C++ interface to MiniZinc. It is planned to be released as part of MiniZinc 2.0.