Arc-Consistency and Arc-Consistency Again

There is no need to show the importance of arc-consistency in Constraint Networks. Mohr and Henderson [8] have proposed AC-4, an algorithm having an optimal worst-case time complexity. But it has two drawbacks: its space complexity and its average time complexity. In problems with many solutions, where the size of the constraints is large, these drawbacks become so important that users often replace AC-4 by AC-3 [7], a nonoptimal algorithm. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm, AC-6, which keeps the optimal worst-case time complexity of AC-4 while working out the drawback of space complexity. More, the average time complexity of AC-6 is optimal for constraint networks where nothing is known about the semantic of the constraints. At the end of the paper, experimental results show how much AC-6 outperforms AC-3 andּAC-4.