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Positive Boolean Functions as Multiheaded Clauses

Howe, Jacob M. and King, Andy (2001) Positive Boolean Functions as Multiheaded Clauses. In: Codognet, Philippe, ed. International Conference on Logic Programming. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2237 . Springer-Verlag, London, pp. 120-134. ISBN 3-540-42935-2. (doi:10.1007/3-540-45635-X_16) (KAR id:13522)

Abstract

Boolean functions are ubiquitous in the analysis of (constraint) logic programs. The domain of positive Boolean functions, Pos, has been used for expressing, for example, groundness, finiteness and sharing dependencies. The performance of an analyser based on Boolean functions is critically dependent on the way in which the functions are represented. This paper discusses multiheaded clauses as a representation of positive Boolean functions. The domain operations for multiheaded clauses are conceptually simple and can be implemented straightforwardly in Prolog. Moreover these operations generalise those for the less algorithmically complex operations of propositional Horn clauses, leading to naturally stratified algorithms. The multiheaded clause representation is used to build a Pos-based groundness analyser. The analyser performs surprisingly well and scales smoothly, not requiring widening to analyse any program in the benchmark suite.

Item Type: Book section
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/3-540-45635-X_16
Additional information: see http://www.springer.de./comp/lncs/index.html
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming,
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Andy King
Date Deposited: 24 Nov 2008 17:58 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:51 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/13522 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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