Abstract
The paper presented two kinds of proof rules to prove B-termination, the kind of termination obtained by the combination of backtracking and recursion as displayed by Prolog. The first kind of rule takes into account the context of the whole program and is based on a tree oriented operational semantics. The second kind is more compositional, dealing with separate procedures in a context independent way. It is based on a stream oriented semantics.
We would like to stress that such proof rules may be successfully used for defining other search strategies than the actual one used by prolog. An interesting question is to define in this way a probabilistic backtracking search strategy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
K.R. Apt, M.H. Van Emden: "Contributions to the theory of logic programming", JACM 29, 3 (July 1982).
W.F. Clockskin, C.S.Mellish: "Programming in Prolog", Springer (1981).
M.H. Van Emden, R.A. Kowalski: "The semantics of predicate logic as a programming language", JACM 23,4 (1976).
R.M.Floyd: "Assigning meanings to programs", proc AMS symp. in app. math. 19 Providence, R.I (1967)
N.Francez, B.Klebanski, A.Pnueli: "Backtracking in recursive computations", Acta Informatica 8 (1977).
O.Grumberg, N.Francez, J.A.Makovsky, W.P.de Roever: "A proof rule for fair termination of guarded commands", proc. int. symp. on Algorithmic Languages, Amsterdam (1981).
N.D. Jones, A.Mycroft: "Stepwise developement of operational and denotational semantics of Prolog", TR. Univ. of Copenhagen, 1983.
R.A.Kowalski: "Predicate logic as a programming language", in: Info. Proc. 74 (J.Rosenfeld,ed.), North-Holland (1974).
D.Lehmann, A.Pnueli, J.Stavi: "Impartiality, justice and fairness: the ethics of concurrent termination", proc. 8th ICALP, ACRE, (1981); LNCS 115 (S.Even, O.Kariv-eds.), Springer 1981.
New Generation Computing, Springer; (the existence of a journal devoted to the subject is taken as evidence for interest in that subject).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1985 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Francez, N., Grumberg, O., Katz, S., Pnueli, A. (1985). Proving termination of Prolog programs. In: Parikh, R. (eds) Logics of Programs. Logic of Programs 1985. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 193. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-15648-8_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-15648-8_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-15648-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39527-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive