[](https://crates.io/crates/biodivine-lib-bdd)
[](https://docs.rs/biodivine-lib-bdd/)
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[](https://codecov.io/gh/sybila/biodivine-lib-bdd)
[](https://github.com/sybila/biodivine-lib-bdd/issues)
[](https://biodivine.fi.muni.cz/docs/biodivine-lib-bdd/latest/)
[](https://github.com/sybila/biodivine-lib-bdd/commits/master)
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# Biodivine/LibBDD
> You can now also access the full functionality of `lib-bdd` from Python! The library is available as part of the [AEON.py](https://github.com/sybila/biodivine-aeon-py) package.
This crate provides a basic implementation of [binary decision diagrams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_decision_diagram) (BDDs) in Rust — a symbolic data
structure for representing Boolean functions or other equivalent objects (such as bit-vector
sets).
Compared to other popular implementations, every BDD owns its memory. It is thus trivial to
serialise, but also to share between threads. This makes it useful for applications that
process high number of BDDs concurrently, but is also generally more idiomatic in Rust.
At the moment, we support many standard operations on BDDs:
- Any binary logical operation (`and`, `or`, `iff`, ...), and of course negation.
- Evaluation of Boolean expressions parsed from a string.
- A `bdd!` macro for a more idiomatic building of BDDs inside Rust.
- Methods for CNF/DNF transformations (BDD => CNF/DNF and CNF/DNF => BDD). (We do not guarantee minimality of CNF/DNF)
- Binary and text serialization/deserialization of BDDs.
- Valuation/path iterators and other `Bdd` introspection methods (`random_valuation`, `most_fixed_clause`, ...).
- Export of `Bdd` back into a Boolean expression.
- "Relational" operations: projection (existential quantification), selection (restriction) and unique subset picking (see tutorials for more info).
- Various "advanced" apply algorithms: binary operations "fused" with variable inversion (flip), enforced node limit, and existential/universal projection; ternary operations and ternary operations with variable inversion...
- Export to `.dot` graphs.
More detailed description of all features can be found in our [tutorial module](https://docs.rs/biodivine-lib-bdd/latest/biodivine_lib_bdd/tutorial/index.html), and of course in the [API documentation](https://docs.rs/biodivine-lib-bdd/latest/).
```rust
use biodivine_lib_bdd::*;
fn main() {
let mut builder = BddVariableSetBuilder::new();
let [a, b, c] = builder.make(&["a", "b", "c"]);
let variables: BddVariableSet = builder.build();
// String expressions:
let x = variables.eval_expression_string("(a <=> !b) | c ^ a");
// Macro:
let y = bdd!(variables, (a <=> (!b)) | (c ^ a));
// Logical operators:
let z = variables.mk_literal(a, true)
.iff(&variables.mk_literal(b, false))
.or(&variables.mk_literal(c, true).xor(&variables.mk_literal(a, true)));
assert!(!x.is_false());
assert_eq!(6.0, x.cardinality());
assert_eq!(x, y);
assert_eq!(y, z);
assert_eq!(z, x);
for valuation in x.sat_valuations() {
assert!(x.eval_in(&valuation));
}
}
```
**Correctness:** At the moment, the project has a quite good test coverage (including a simple formula fuzzer) and is used in multiple applications. However, in case of any unexpected behaviour, please submit an issue here. There are many edge cases which we may have not considered.
**Completeness:** Even though the library can support a wide range of applications, the API is still missing some features provided by other BDD libraries. Furthermore, the performance of some methods could be definitely improved. If you find that something is either missing or unexpectedly slow/impractical to implement, feel free to create an issue with a feature request, or send us a pull request!
### Citation
If you are using `lib-bdd` in academic research, we'd very much appreciate a citation. There isn't a specific `lib-bdd` publication, however, `lib-bdd` originated in the tool AEON. As such, you can cite `lib-bdd` as the "BDD library of the tool AEON".
```
@inproceedings{aeon,
title = {{AEON}: {A}ttractor {B}ifurcation {A}nalysis of {P}arametrised {B}oolean {N}etworks},
author = {Bene{\v{s}}, Nikola
and Brim, Lubo{\v{s}}
and Kadlecaj, Jakub
and Pastva, Samuel
and {\v{S}}afr{\'a}nek, David},
year = {2020},
month = {07},
booktitle = {Computer Aided Verification},
editor = {Lahiri, Shuvendu K.
and Wang, Chao},
pages = {569 -- 581},
numPages = {13},
publisher = {Springer},
series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
volume = {12224},
isbn = {978-3-030-53288-8},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-53288-8\_28}
}
```
### Performance
> The benchmarks presented here are quite outdated, but still at least somewhat relevant. There is an ongoing effort to provide a better benchmark suite, but this has not been completed yet.
Critical part of every BDD implementation is performance. Currently, the repository contains a
`benchmark` branch with several benchmark problems evaluable using this crate as well as other
state-of-the-art BDD libraries (`bex`, `cudd` and `buddy`). In our experience,
`biodivine-lib-bdd` performs comparably to these libraries for complex problem instances:
The benchmarks typically consist of incrementally constructing one large BDD of exponential size.
For some applications where node reuse is critically important (very similar formulas appear
repeatedly, or very small modifications to a single BDD are performed), `lib-bdd` would likely be slower. However, in our experience, these types of problems do not appear in verification/formal methods very often.
Also note that even though `buddy` is winning, the setting of initial cache size was critical when achieving this level of performance (each benchmark has a specifically tuned cache size to avoid garbage collection and overallocation). If the size of the problem is not known beforehand, `buddy` may perform significantly worse.