[gecode-users] Reifying constraints without posting them

[Tommaso Urli]

Hello,
     I'm trying to introduce the following constraint in my model: let x 
be a set of variables (an IntVarArray) and y a proper subset (a slice) 
of them, I want to know how many variables in y get values among a given 
set of values. Problem is: I want to implement this as a "soft" 
constraint, i.e. I want to minimize/maximize the number of times this 
condition is satisfied, but without actually posting the constraint.
     I have tried with reified membership constraints, but apart from 
reification (that did exactly what I wanted it to do), they actually 
post propagators and thus prune my search space. I have tried counting 
constraints as well, but none of them matches the semantics I need, so I 
suspect that this kind of constraint cannot simply be expressed, am I wrong?

Thanks,
Tommaso