I am having an expression, suppose,
a = 1 && (b = 1 || b != 0 ) && (c >= 35 || d != 5) && (c >= 38 || d = 6)
I expect it to be reduced to,
a = 1 && b != 0 && (c >= 38 || d = 6)
Does anyone have any suggestions? Pointers to any algorithm?
Nota Bene: Karnaugh Map or Quine-McCluskey are not an option here, I believe. As these methods don't handle grey cases. I mean, expression can only be reduced as far as things are like, A or A' or nothing, or say black or white or absense-of-colour. But here I'm having grey shades, as you folks can see.
Solution: I have written the program for this in Clojure. I used map of a map containing a function as value. That came pretty handy, just a few rules for a few combinations and you are good. Thanks for your helpful answers.
I think you should be able to achieve what you want by using Constraint Handling Rules. You would need to write rules that simplify the OR- and AND-expressions.
The main difficulty would be the constraint entailment check that tells you which parts you can drop. E.g., (c >= 35 || d != 5) && (c >= 38 || d = 6) simplifies to (c >= 38 || d = 6) because the former is entailed by the latter, i.e., the latter is more specific. For the OR-expressions, you would need to choose the more general part, though.
Google found a paper on an extension of CHR with entailment check for user-defined constraints. I don't know enough CHR to be able to tell you whether you would need such an extension.