Design and Implementation of a Higher-Order Logic Programming Language

HiLog是一种无类型逻辑，具有高阶语法和一阶语义。本课题将扩展HiLog的理论，设计一种基于HiLog的霍恩子句逻辑程序设计语言，并开发该语言的高效实现。目标是开发一个比目前可用于声明性编程的更强大的系统。HiLog允许变量胜过谓词，因此支持更强大的编程和元编程风格。它还允许程序员使用函数符号构造新的谓词名，这为HiLog中的模块化编程提供了一种简单明了的方法。然而，新语言的语义是一阶的，因此可以实现与Prolog相当的效率。最终的实施将使用新开发的索引技术来提高其效率。它将支持扩展表评估技术的低级（基于wam的）实现，以提供查询的完整逻辑评估。扩展表技术将得到扩展，以支持基于良好基础语义的逻辑程序中更完整的否定实现。该系统将成为一个强大的原型工具，可以帮助更快地开发健壮的软件。

HiLog is an untyped logic with a higher-order syntax and a first-order semantics. This project will extend the theory of HiLog, design a Horn-clause logic programming language based on HiLog, and develop an efficient implementation of this language. The goal is to develop a more powerful system than is currently available for declarative programming. HiLog permits variables over predicates and thus supports a more powerful programming and metaprogramming style. It also lets the programmer construct new predicate names using function symbols, which leads to a simple and clean methodology for modular programming in HiLog. However, the semantics of the new language is first-order so that an implementation of efficiency comparable to Prolog is achievable. The eventual implementation will use newly developed indexing techniques to increase its efficiency. It will support a low-level (WAM-based) implementation of the extension-table evaluation technique to provide a complete logical evaluation of queries. The extension-table techniques will be extended to support a more complete implementation of negation in logic programs based on the well-founded semantics. The system will be a powerful prototyping tool that can help in the development of robust software more quickly.