Analysing Definitional Trees: Looking for Determinism

Abstract. This paper describes how high level implementations of (needed) narrowing into Prolog can be improved by analysing definitional trees. First, we introduce a refined representation of definitional trees that handles properly the knowledge about the inductive positions of a pattern. The aim is to take advantage of the new representation of definitional trees to improve the aforementioned kind of implementation systems. Second, we introduce selective unfolding transformations, on determinate atom calls in the Prolog code, by examining the existence of what we call "deterministic (sub)branches" in a definitional tree. As a result of this analysis, we define some generic algorithms that allow us to compile a functional logic program into a set of Prolog clauses which increases determinism and incorporates some refinements that are obtained by ad hoc artifices in other similar implementations of functional logic languages. We also present and discuss the advantages of our...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: FLOPS
• Authors: Pascual Julián Iranzo, Christian Villamizar Lamus
• Keywords: Automated Reasoning, Definitional Tree, FLOPS 2004, Functional Logic, Prolog