Termination of simply-moded well-typed logic programs under a tabled execution mechanism

Citation
S. Verbaeten et D. De Schreye, Termination of simply-moded well-typed logic programs under a tabled execution mechanism, APPL ALG EN, 12(1-2), 2001, pp. 157-196
Citations number
32
Categorie Soggetti
Engineering Mathematics
Journal title
APPLICABLE ALGEBRA IN ENGINEERING COMMUNICATION AND COMPUTING
ISSN journal
09381279 → ACNP
Volume
12
Issue
1-2
Year of publication
2001
Pages
157 - 196
Database
ISI
SICI code
0938-1279(200106)12:1-2<157:TOSWLP>2.0.ZU;2-B
Abstract
Tabled logic programming is receiving increasing attention in the Logic Pro gramming community. It avoids many of the shortcomings of SLD(NF) execution and provides a more flexible and often extremely efficient execution mecha nism for logic programs. In particular, tabled execution of logic programs terminates more often than execution based on SLD-resolution. So, if a prog ram can be proven to terminate under SLD-resolution, then the program will trivially also terminate under SLG-resolution, the resolution principle of tabling. But, since there are SLG-terminating programs which are not SLD-te rminating, more effective proof techniques can be found. One of the few app roaches studying termination of tabled logic programs was developed by Deco rte et al. They present necessary and sufficient conditions for two notions of termination under LG-resolution, i.e. SLG-resolution with left-to-right selection rule: quasi-termination and (the stronger notion of) LG-terminat ion. Starting from these necessary and sufficient conditions, we introduce sufficient conditions for quasi-termination and LG-termination which are st ated fully at the clause level and are easy to automatize. To this end, we use mode and type information: we consider simply-moded, well-typed program s and queries. We point out how our termination conditions can be automatiz ed, by extending the recently developed, constraint-based, automatic termin ation analysis for SLD-resolution of Decorte and De Schreye. Finally, we pr esent a result on substitution-closedness of quasi-termination and LG-termi nation for the class of simply-moded, well-typed programs and queries.