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Gallai-Edmonds decomposition as a pruning technique. (English) Zbl 1339.90322
Summary: We introduce a generic propagation mechanism for constraint programming. The method is based on the results of matching theory which is a mature and well-studied subject of graph theory. A first benefit of our new pruning technique comes from the fact that it can be applied on several global constraints whose solution is representable by a matching in a particular graph. In this work we describe a filtering scheme for such a family based on the Gallai-Edmonds Structure Theorem. In a number of important cases our method achieves hyper-arc consistency in polynomial time.

##### MSC:
 90C35 Programming involving graphs or networks 90C25 Convex programming 91B68 Matching models 05C85 Graph algorithms (graph-theoretic aspects)
LEDA; SCIL
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##### References:
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