Author: Joseph Scott, Uppsala University

This is a prototype implementation. Use at your own risk.

This is an implementation of an Gecode extension to handle bounded-length strings. At the moment, a string is represented by two components:

• an array of symbol variables (IntVar only at the moment)
• an IntVar length

Constraints include equal, concat, substring, character_at, and an implementation of Michael Maher's bounded open version of the regular constraint.

There is also a technical report outlining the theoretical foundation for the bounded-length string domain

"make all" should do the trick (but see below).

• www.gecode.org — Gecode (4.2 or greater)
• openfst.org — openFST (tested with 1.4.1)

The makefile is not completely automated. Here are a few things you may need to adjust:

1. GECODE needs to point to your gecode install directory (If you've built but not installed gecode, you need to override the GECODE_LIB and GECODE_INCL variables appropriately.)
2. Architecture is determined by the ARCH variable:

• "linux") (DEFAULT)
  • You probably need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include both the Gecode and openFST libraries
  • (usually LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib).
• "mac")
  • You'll either have to install g++-4.8, or fix the Makefile to work with clang
  • And set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
• "windows") *erm...sorry, I have no idea. Lycka till!

3. To use Gecode with gist, set GIST=true
4. The minizinc executables (i.e., [mf]zn-gecode-string) require that you have built gecode from source:
5. Set GECODE_SRC to point to the root directory of the gecode source
6. You may need to change the library files included when linking fzn-gecode-string, in order to accurately reflect your gecode build. If you built gecode with float variables, for example, then fzn-gecode-string must be linked to -libgecodefloat.