Theory and Implementation of Equational Logic Programming

这是一个正在进行的研究项目，旨在探索等式逻辑编程的可实现性和实用性。它已经为方程编程语言产生了一个编译器，其中程序是一组方程，输入是项，计算是程序中方程的某些逻辑结果的推导，导致以范式的形式输出与输入等价的项。该语言的新特点包括完全拒绝为了性能而妥协语义，导致统一使用“懒惰”评估--这是一种精确地自动计算与最终输出相关的信息的技术。当前版本的编译器使用中间代码的部分求值作为一种优化技术，其性能接近于用于C语言的传统优化编译器。继续研究将包括研究更复杂的求值技术以提高性能，理论上的进展以扩展可编译的方程程序类，模拟研究以确定方程编程语言的并行实现的潜在好处，以及高级用户界面的实验，包括结构编辑器界面。

This is an ongoing research project to explore the implementability and utility of Equational Logic Programming. It has already produced a compiler for an equational programming lanquage in which a program is a set of equations, an input is a term, and a computation is a derivation of certain logical consequences of the equations in the program, leading to the output of a term in normal form equivalent to the input. Novel features of the language include a total refusal to compromise semantics for performance, leading to a uniform use of "lazy" evaluation - a technique in which precisely the information demonstrably relevant to the final output is automatically computed. The current version of the compiler uses partial evaluation of intermediate code as an optimization technique, and its performance is approaching that of conventional optimized compilers for C. Continuing research will include the study of more sophisticated evaluation techniques to improve performance, theoretical advances to extend the class of equational programs that can be compiled, simulation studies to determine the potential benefits of parallel implementations of equational programming languages, and experimentation with advance user interfaces, including structure editor interfaces.