Abstract
There is a wide class of problems for which the natural Prolog specification, as a top-down, recursive computation, is significantly less efficient than an iterative bottom-up version. However, the transformation from the top-down specification to the bottom-up implementation is not always obvious, principally due to problems with nondeterminism and the order in which variables get bound — problems which do not arise in comparable situations in functional languages. This paper illustrates how these problems can be handled in certain cases, and the transformation mechanized, using algebraic properties of operators such as associativity and distributivity. The resulting programs are tail-recursive, and hence significantly more efficient in space usage, with no deterioration in execution speed.
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant number DCR-8407688.
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Debray, S.K. (1985). Optimizing almost-tail-recursive prolog programs. In: Jouannaud, JP. (eds) Functional Programming Languages and Computer Architecture. FPCA 1985. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 201. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-15975-4_38
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-15975-4_38
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