Specialising the Ground Representation in the Logic Programming Language Godel. C.A.Gurr

Meta-programs form a class of logic programs of major importance. In the past it has proved very diÆcult to provide a declarative semantics for meta-programs in languages such as Prolog. These problems have been identied as largely being caused by the fact that Prolog fails to handle the necessary representation requirements adequately. The ground representation is receiving increasing recognition as being necessary to adequately represent meta-programs. However, the expense it incurs has largely precluded its use to date. The logic programming language Godel is a declarative successor to Prolog. Godel provides considerable support for meta-programming, in the form of a ground rep-resentation. Using this representation, Godel meta-programs have the advantage of having a declarative semantics and can be optimised by program specialisation, to execute in a time comparable to equivalent Prolog meta-programs which use a non-ground representation