Abstract. Functional logic programming languages combine the most important declarative programming paradigms, and attempts to combine these paradigms have a long history. The declarative multi-paradigm language Curry is influenced by recent advances in the foundations and implementation of functional logic languages. The development of Curry is an international initiative intended to provide a common platform for the research, teaching, and application of integrated functional logic languages. This paper surveys the foundations of functional logic programming that are relevant for Curry, the main features of Curry, and extensions and applications of Curry and functional logic programming. 1

This paper describes an implementation of narrowing, an essential component of implementations of modern functional logic languages. These implementations rely on narrowing, in particular on some optimal narrowing strategies, to execute functional logic programs. We translate functional logic programs into imperative (Java) programs without an intermediate abstract machine. A central idea of our approach is the explicit representation and processing of narrowing computations as data objects. This enables the implementation of operationally complete strategies (i.e., without backtracking) or techniques for search control (e.g., encapsulated search). Thanks to the use of an intermediate and portable representation of programs, our implementation is general enough to be used as a common back end for a wide variety of functional logic languages.

Abstract. In this paper we define an operational semantics for functional logic languages covering notions like laziness, sharing, concurrency, non-determinism, etc. Such a semantics is not only important to provide appropriate language definitions to reason about programs and check the correctness of implementations but it is also a basis to develop languagespecific tools, like program tracers, profilers, optimizers, etc. First, we define a "big-step " semantics in natural style to relate expressions and their evaluated results. Since this semantics is not sufficient to cover concurrency, search strategies, or to reason about costs associated to particular computations, we also define a "small-step " operational semantics covering the features of modern functional logic languages.

Abstract. Declarative programming languages advocate a programming style expressing the properties of problems and their solutions rather than how to compute individual solutions. Depending on the underlying formalism to express such properties, one can distinguish different classes of declarative languages, like functional, logic, or constraint programming languages. This paper surveys approaches to combine these different classes into a single programming language. 1

Abstract. Functional logic languages extend purely functional languages with two features: operations defined by overlapping rules and logic variables in both defining rules and expressions to evaluate. In this paper, we show that only one of these features is sufficient in a core language. On the one hand, overlapping rules can be eliminated by introducing logic variables in rules. On the other hand, logic variables can be eliminated by introducing operations defined by overlapping rules. The proposed transformations between different classes of programs not only give a better understanding of the features of functional logic programs but also may simplify implementations of functional logic languages. 1

We introduce the theoretical basis for tracing lazy functional logic computations in a declarative multi-paradigm language like Curry. Tracing computations is a difficult task due to the subtleties of the underlying operational semantics which combines laziness and non-determinism. In this work, we define an instrumented operational semantics that generates not only the computed values and bindings but also an appropriate data structure—a sort of redex trail—which can be used to trace computations at an adequate level of abstraction. In contrast to previous approaches, which rely solely on a transformation to instrument source programs, the formal definition of a tracing semantics improves the understanding of the tracing process. Furthermore, it allows us to formally prove the correctness of the computed trail. A prototype implementation of a tracer based on this semantics demonstrates the usefulness of our approach.

In this work we provide a semantic description of functional logic languages covering notions like laziness, sharing, and non-determinism. Such a semantic description is essential, for instance, to have appropriate language definitions in order to reason about programs and check the correctness of implementations. First, we define a "big-step" semantics in natural style to relate expressions and their evaluated results. Since this semantics is not su#cient to reason about the operational aspects of programs, we also define a "small-step" operational semantics covering the main features of functional logic languages. Finally, we demonstrate the equivalence of the "small-step" semantics and the natural semantics.

Abstract. We propose an extension of functional logic languages that allows the definition of operations with patterns containing other defined operation symbols. Such “function patterns ” have many advantages over traditional constructor patterns. They allow a direct representation of specifications as declarative programs, provide better abstractions of patterns as first-class objects, and support the highlevel programming of queries and transformation of complex structures. Moreover, they avoid known problems that occur in traditional programs using strict equality. We define their semantics via a transformation into standard functional logic programs. Since this transformation might introduce an infinite number of rules, we suggest an implementation that can be easily integrated with existing functional logic programming systems. 1

Abstract not found

The traditional investigation of rewriting and narrowing strategies aims at establishing fundamental properties, such as soundness, completeness and/or optimality, of a strategy. In this work, we analyze and compare rewriting and narrowing strategies from the point of view of the information taken into account by a strategy to compute a step. The notion of demandness provides a suitable framework for presenting and comparing well-known strategies. We find the existence of an almost linear sequence of strategies that take into account more and more information. We show on examples that, as we progress on this sequence, a strategy becomes more focused and avoids some useless steps computed by strategies preceding it in this sequence. Our work, which is still in progress, clarifies the behavior of similar or related strategies and it promises to simplify the transfer of some results from one strategy to another. It also suggests that the notion of demandness is both atomic and fundamental to the study of strategies.