Abstract
This paper describes an extension to NU-Prolog which allows evaluable functions to be defined using equations. We consider it to be the most pragmatic way of combining functional and relational programming. The implementation consists of several hundred lines of Prolog code and the underlying Prolog implementation was not modified at all. However, the system is reasonably efficient and supports coroutining, optional lazy evaluation, higher order functions and parallel execution. Efficiency is gained in several ways. First, we use some new implementation techniques. Second, we exploit some of the unique features of NU-Prolog, though these features are not essential to the implementation. Third, the language is designed so that we can take advantage of implicit mode and determinism information. Although we have not concentrated on the semantics of the language, we believe that our language design decisions and implementation techniques will be useful in the next generation of combined functional and relational languages.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
P.G. Bosco, C. Cecchi, and C. Moiso. Exploiting the full power of logic plus functional programming. In Kenneth A. Bowen and Robert A. Kowalski, editors, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference/Symposium on Logic Programming, pages 3–17, Seattle, Washington, August 1988.
P.G. Bosco, C. Cecchi, C. Moiso, M. Porta, and G. Sofi. Logic and functional programming on distributed memory architectures. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Logic Programming, Jerusalem, Israel, June 1990.
M.H.M. Cheng, M.H. van Emden, and B.E. Richards. On warren's method for functional programming in logic. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Logic Programming, Jerusalem, Israel, June 1990.
J. Darlington, A.J. Field, and H. Pull. The unification of functional and logic languages. In Doug DeGroot and Gary Lindstrom, editors, Logic programming: relations, functions, and equations, pages 37–70. Prentice-Hall, 1985.
Saumya K. Debray and David S. Warren. Detection and optimisation of functional computations in prolog. In Ehud Shapiro, editor, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Logic Programming, pages 490–504, London, England, July 1986. published as Lecture Notes in Computer Science 225 by Springer-Verlag.
Laurent Fribourg. SLOG: a logic programming language interpreter based on clausal superposition and rewriting. In Proceedings of the Second IEEE Symposium on Logic Programming, pages 172–184, Boston, Massachusetts, July 1985.
Joseph A. Goguen and Jose Meseguer. EQLOG: equality, types, and generic modules for logic programming. In Doug DeGroot and Gary Lindstrom, editors, Logic programming: relations, functions, and equations, pages 295–363. Prentice-Hall, 1985.
Steve Gregory. Parallel logic programming in parlog. Addison-Wesley, Wokingham, England, 1987.
Alan Josephson and Nachum Dershowitz. An implementation of narrowing the RITE way. In Proceedings of the Third IEEE Symposium on Logic Programming, pages 187–197, Salt Lake City, Utah, September 1986.
S. Peyton Jones. The implementation of functional programming languages. Prentice Hall International series in computer science. Prentice Hall, London, 1987.
Lee Naish. Negation and control in Prolog. Number 238 in Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1986.
Lee Naish. Parallelizing NU-Prolog. In Kenneth A. Bowen and Robert A. Kowalski, editors, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference/Symposium on Logic Programming, pages 1546–1564, Seattle, Washington, August 1988.
Lee Naish. Adding equations to NU-prolog. Technical Report 91/2, Department of Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, 1990.
Sanjai Narain. A technique for doing lazy evaluation in logic. Journal of Logic Programming, 3(3):259–276, October 1986.
Sanjai Narain. LOG(F): An optimal combination of logic programming, rewriting and lazy evaluation. Ph.d. thesis, Dept. of computer science, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 1988.
Uday S. Reddy. Narrowing as the operational semantics of functional languages. In Proceedings of the Second IEEE Symposium on Logic Programming, pages 138–151, Boston, Massachusetts, July 1985.
Yeh-Heng Sheng. HIFUNLOG: logic programming with higher-order relational functions. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Logic Programming, Jerusalem, Israel, June 1990.
P.A. Subrahmanyam and Jia-Huai You. FUNLOG: a computational model integrating logic programming and functional programming. In Doug DeGroot and Gary Lindstrom, editors, Logic programming: relations, functions, and equations, pages 157–198. Prentice-Hall, 1985.
David H.D. Warren. Higher-order extensions to prolog: are they needed? In J.E. Hayes, Donald Michie, and Y-H. Pao, editors, Machine Intelligence 10, pages 441–454. Ellis Horwood Ltd., Chicester, England, 1982.
David H.D. Warren. An abstract Prolog instruction set. Tecnical Note 309, SRI International, Menlo Park, California, October 1983.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Naish, L. (1991). Adding equations to NU-Prolog. In: Maluszyński, J., Wirsing, M. (eds) Programming Language Implementation and Logic Programming. PLILP 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 528. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54444-5_84
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54444-5_84
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-54444-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38362-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive