We propose a medium in which expert programmers can design, test and organise Prolog programming techniques. The proposed approach employs simple single-argument program fragments and their combinations in order to represent techniques. The devised techniques can be made available to other programmers, by means of techniques-based editors. 1 Introduction Due to the simplicity and compactness of the syntax of Prolog, commonly occurring patterns in programs can be detected automatically [Loo88, Bow92] or manually and used in a variety of ways, e.g. the detection of bugs [Loo88], the construction of (similar) programs [GH91, KLS89], the automatic explanation of programs [Gab92] and teaching purposes (automatic or human tutoring) [BBD + 91, Rob91]. These patterns are loosely named techniques [Bow92, Brn91, BBD + 91] and, together with knowledge of when and where to use them, provide a useful account of the body of knowledge necessary for the systematic development of correct Prolog pr...

Techniques editing, as proposed by Sterling et al., allows Prolog programs to be constructed by initially selecting a `skeleton' which determines the flow of control of the program, and then adding on top of this the extra features required by the program. This means that it is easy to obtain as an end-result of techniques editing not only the final program but also a history of its development, in terms of the skeleton and extensions used to build it. We describe how this program history information can be used to produce efficient combined programs from pairs of initial programs constructed independently by a techniques editor. Keywords: techniques editor, classification of Prolog programs, join specification, composition methods, unfold/fold transformations, meta-folding operation, program history. 1 Introduction This paper addresses the combination of two programs constructed by means of a specialised techniques editor, briefly described in Section 2. Currently the techniques edit...

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In this work we address program generation for simulation models in a restricted class of ecological domain. A first approach to deal with this problem, the EL Program Generation System was presented in [Robertson et al. 91]. That system produced a Prolog program by assembling modular predicate-level definitions obtained from a library of program schemata. The approach presented here is to use Prolog Programming Techniques as the element of program construction which acting in a clause-level, is expected to make the generation process more flexible and explicit. The resulting system, TBPG -- A Technique-Based Program Generator, embodies the ideas developed through this dissertation. It is a two-level processing tool which uses a Techniques Editor to construct a Prolog predicate by using a techniques library, controlled by a Generation Control module which manages the generation process.