"Classical" partial deduction, within the framework by Lloyd and Shepherdson, computes partial deduction for separate atoms independently. As a consequence, a number of program optimisations, known from unfold/fold transformations and supercompilation, cannot be achieved. In this paper, we show that this restriction can be lifted through (polygenetic) specialisation of entire atom conjunctions. We present a generic algorithm for such partial deduction and discuss its correctness in an extended formal framework. We concentrate on novel control challenges specific to this "conjunctive" partial deduction. We refine the generic algorithm into a fully automatic concrete one that registers partially deduced conjunctions in a global tree, and prove its termination and correctness. We discuss some further control refinements and illustrate the operation of the concrete algorithm and/or some of its possible variants on interesting transformation examples.

We present a method for proving properties of definite logic programs. This method is called unfold/fold proof method because it is based on the unfold/fold transformation rules...

. Recently, partial deduction of logic programs has been extended to conceptually embed folding. To this end, partial deductions are no longer computed of single atoms, but rather of entire conjunctions; Hence the term "conjunctive partial deduction". Conjunctive partial deduction aims at achieving unfold/fold-like program transformations such as tupling and deforestation within fully automated partial deduction. However, its merits greatly surpass that limited context: Also other major efficiency improvements are obtained through considerably improved side-ways information propagation. In this extended abstract, we investigate conjunctive partial deduction in practice. We describe the concrete options used in the implementation(s), look at abstraction in a practical Prolog context, include and discuss an extensive set of benchmark results. From these, we can conclude that conjunctive partial deduction indeed pays off in practice, thoroughly beating its conventional precursor on a wide...

We propose a transformation system for Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) programs and modules. The framework is inspired by the one of Tamaki and Sato for pure logic programs [37]. However, the use of CLP allows us to introduce some new operations such as splitting and constraint replacement. We provide two sets of applicability conditions. The first one guarantees that the original and the transformed programs have the same computational behaviour, in terms of answer constraints. The second set contains more restrictive conditions that ensure compositionality: we prove that under these conditions the original and the transformed modules have the same answer constraints also when they are composed with other modules. This result is proved by first introducing a new formulation, in terms of trees, of a resultants semantics for CLP. As corollaries we obtain the correctness of both the modular and the non-modular system w.r.t. the least model semantics. AMS Subject Classification (1991)...

The relation between partial deduction and the unfold/fold approach has been a matter of intense discussion. In this paper we consolidate the advantages of the two approaches and provide an extended partial deduction framework in which most of the tupling and deforestation transformations of the fold/unfold approach, as well the current partial deduction transformations, can be achieved. Moreover, most of the advantages of partial deduction, e.g. lower complexity and a more detailed understanding of control issues, are preserved. We build on well-defined concepts in partial deduction and present a conceptual embedding of folding into partial deduction, called conjunctive partial deduction. Two minimal extensions to partial deduction are proposed: using conjunctions of atoms instead of atoms as the principle specialisation entity and also renaming conjunctions of atoms instead of individual atoms. Correctness results for the extended framework (with respect to computed answer semantics and finite failure semantics) are given. Experiments with a prototype implementation are presented, showing that, somewhat to our surprise, conjunctive partial deduction not only handles the removal of unnecessary variables, but also leads to substantial improvements in specialisation for standard partial deduction examples. 1

Abstract. Well-quasi orders in general, and homeomorphic embedding in particular, have gained popularity to ensure the termination of techniques for program analysis, specialisation, transformation, and verification. In this paper we survey and discuss this use of homeomorphic embedding and clarify the advantages of such an approach over one using well-founded orders. We also discuss various extensions of the homeomorphic embedding relation. We conclude with a study of homeomorphic embedding in the context of metaprogramming, presenting some new (positive and negative) results and open problems.

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. A partial deduction strategy for logic programs usually uses an abstraction operation to guarantee the finiteness of the set of atoms for which partial deductions are produced. Finding an abstraction operation which guarantees finiteness and does not loose relevant information is a difficult problem. In earlier work Gallagher and Bruynooghe proposed to base the abstraction operation on characteristic paths and trees. A characteristic tree captures the relevant structure of the generated partial SLDNF-tree for a given goal. Unfortunately the abstraction operations proposed in the earlier work do not always produce more general atoms and do not always preserve the characteristic trees. This problem has been solved for purely determinate unfolding rules and definite programs in [12, 13] by using constraints inside the partial deduction process. In this paper we propose an alternate solution which achieves the preservation of characteristic trees for any unfolding rule, normal logic prog...

In this paper we describe work in progress concerning the (semi-)automatic support for developing agents. We focus on the scenario in which agents have to be designed to follow an electronic institution. An initial design pattern is automatically extracted from a given electronic institution and oered to programmers willing to develop agents for the speci c purpose of joining and performing in the electronic institution. We resort to logic programming as our underlying computational framework, explaining and justifying this decision.

Partial deduction strategies for logic programs often use an abstraction operator to guarantee the finiteness of the set of goals for which partial deductions are produced. Finding an abstraction operator which guarantees finiteness and does not lose relevant information is a difficult problem. In earlier work Gallagher and Bruynooghe proposed to base the abstraction operator on characteristic paths and trees, which capture the structure of the generated incomplete SLDNF-tree for a given goal. In this paper we exhibit the advantages of characteristic trees over purely syntactical measures: if characteristic trees can be preserved upon generalisation, then we obtain an almost perfect abstraction operator, providing just enough polyvariance to avoid any loss of local specialisation. Unfortunately, the abstraction operators proposed in earlier work do not always preserve the characteristic trees upon generalisation. We show that this can lead to important specialisation losses as well as to non-termination of the partial deduction algorithm. Furthermore, this problem cannot be adequately solved in the ordinary partial deduction setting. We therefore extend the expressivity and precision of the Lloyd and Shepherdson partial deduction framework by integrating constraints. We provide formal correctness results for the so obtained generic framework of constrained partial deduction. Within this new framework we are, among others, able to overcome the above mentioned problems by introducing an alternative abstraction operator, based on so called pruning constraints. We thus present a terminating partial deduction strategy which, for purely determinate unfolding rules, induces no loss of local specialisation due to the abstraction while ensuring correctness o...