Abstract
We provide a theoretical basis for studying termination of logic programs with the Prolog selection rule. To this end we study the class of left terminating programs. These are logic programs that terminate with the Prolog selection rule for all ground goals. First we show that various ways of defining semantics coincide for left terminating programs. Then we offer a characterization of left terminating programs that provides us with a practical method of proving termination. The method is proven to be complete and is illustrated by giving simple proofs of termination of the quicksort, permutation and mergesort programs for the desired class of goals.
This research was partly done during the author’s stay at the Department of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, U.S.A. . First author’s work was partly supported by ESPRIT Basic Research Action 3020 (Integration). Second author’s work was partly supported by ESPRIT Basic Research Action 3012 (Compulog) and by the Italian National Research Council — C.N.R..
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© 1990 ECSC — EEC — EAEC, Brussels — Luxembourg
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Apt, K.R., Pedreschi, D. (1990). Studies in Pure Prolog: Termination. In: Lloyd, J.W. (eds) Computational Logic. ESPRIT Basic Research Series. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76274-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76274-1_9
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