Logic program specialisation: How to be more specific

Abstract

Standard partial deduction suffers from several drawbacks when compared to top-down abstract interpretation schemes. Conjunctive partial deduction, an extension of standard partial deduction, remedies one of those, namely the lack of side-ways information passing. But two other problems remain: the lack of success-propagation as well as the lack of inference of global success-information. We illustrate these drawbacks and show how they can be remedied by combining conjunctive partial deduction with an abstract interpretation technique known as more specific program construction. We present a simple, as well as a more refined integration of these methods. Finally we illustrate the practical relevance of this approach for some advanced applications, where it surpasses the precision of current abstract interpretation techniques.

Supported by the Belgian GOA “Non-Standard Applications of Abstract Interpretation”

Senior Research Associate of the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research