Abstract not found

The theory of cut-free sequent proofs has been used to motivate and justify the design of a number of logic programming languages. Two such languages, λProlog and its linear logic refinement, Lolli [15], provide for various forms of abstraction (modules, abstract data types, and higher-order programming) but lack primitives for concurrency. The logic programming language, LO (Linear Objects) [2] provides some primitives for concurrency but lacks abstraction mechanisms. In this paper we present Forum, a logic programming presentation of all of linear logic that modularly extends λProlog, Lolli, and LO. Forum, therefore, allows specifications to incorporate both abstractions and concurrency. To illustrate the new expressive strengths of Forum, we specify in it a sequent calculus proof system and the operational semantics of a programming language that incorporates references and concurrency. We also show that the meta theory of linear logic can be used to prove properties of the objectlanguages specified in Forum.

We describe Elf, a metalanguage for proof manipulation environments that are independent of any particular logical system. Elf is intended for meta-programs such as theorem provers, proof transformers, or type inference programs for programming languages with complex type systems. Elf unifies logic definition (in the style of LF, the Edinburgh Logical Framework) with logic programming (in the style of Prolog). It achieves this unification by giving types an operational interpretation, much the same way that Prolog gives certain formulas (Horn-clauses) an operational interpretation. Novel features of Elf include: (1) the Elf search process automatically constructs terms that can represent object-logic proofs, and thus a program need not construct them explicitly, (2) the partial correctness of meta-programs with respect to a given logic can be expressed and proved in Elf itself, and (3) Elf exploits Elliott's unification algorithm for a -calculus with dependent types. This research was...

In this paper we consider the problem of identifying logic programming languages for linear logic. Our analysis builds on a notion of goal-directed provability, characterized by the so-called uniform proofs, previously introduced for minimal and intuitionistic logic. A class of uniform proofs in linear logic is identified by an analysis of the permutability of inferences in the linear sequent calculus. We show that this class of proofs is complete (for logical consequence) for a certain (quite large) fragment of linear logic, which thus forms a logic programming language. We obtain a notion of resolution proof, in which only one left rule, of clause-directed resolution, is required. We also consider a translation, resembling those of Girard, of the hereditary Harrop fragment of intuitionistic logic into our framework. We show that goal-directed provability is preserved under this translation. 1 Introduction An interesting recent development in logic of some significance for theoretica...

The Concurrent Logical Framework, or CLF, is a new logical framework in which concurrent computations can be represented as monadic objects, for which there is an intrinsic notion of concurrency. It is designed as a conservative extension of the linear logical framework LLF with the synchronous connectives# of intuitionistic linear logic, encapsulated in a monad. LLF is itself a conservative extension of LF with the asynchronous connectives -#, & and #.

In order to reason about specifications of computations that are given via the proof search or logic programming paradigm one needs to have at least some forms of induction and some principle for reasoning about the ways in which terms are built and the ways in which computations can progress. The literature contains many approaches to formally adding these reasoning principles with logic specifications. We choose an approach based on the sequent calculus and design an intuitionistic logic F Oλ ∆IN that includes natural number induction and a notion of definition. We have detailed elsewhere that this logic has a number of applications. In this paper we prove the cut-elimination theorem for F Oλ ∆IN, adapting a technique due to Tait and Martin-Löf. This cut-elimination proof is technically interesting and significantly extends previous results of this kind. 1

A generalization of Horn clauses to a higher-order logic is described and examined as a basis for logic programming. In qualitative terms, these higher-order Horn clauses are obtained from the first-order ones by replacing first-order terms with simply typed #-terms and by permitting quantification over all occurrences of function symbols and some occurrences of predicate symbols. Several proof-theoretic results concerning these extended clauses are presented. One result shows that although the substitutions for predicate variables can be quite complex in general, the substitutions necessary in the context of higher-order Horn clauses are tightly constrained. This observation is used to show that these higher-order formulas can specify computations in a fashion similar to first-order Horn clauses. A complete theorem proving procedure is also described for the extension. This procedure is obtained by interweaving higher-order unification with backchaining and goal reductions, and constitutes a higher-order generalization of SLD-resolution. These results have a practical realization in the higher-order logic programming language called λProlog.

The unification of simply typed λ-terms modulo the rules of β- and η-conversions is often called “higher-order ” unification because of the possible presence of variables of functional type. This kind of unification is undecidable in general and if unifiers exist, most general unifiers may not exist. In this paper, we show that such unification problems can be coded as a query of the logic programming language Lλ in a natural and clear fashion. In a sense, the translation only involves explicitly axiomatizing in Lλ the notions of equality and substitution of the simply typed λ-calculus: the rest of the unification process can be viewed as simply an interpreter of Lλ searching for proofs using those axioms. 1

The design of linear logic programming languages and theorem provers opens a number of new implementation challenges not present in more traditional logic languages such as Horn clauses (Prolog) and hereditary Harrop formulas (λProlog and Elf). Among these, the problem of efficiently managing the linear context when solving a goal is of crucial importance for the use of these systems in non-trivial applications. This paper studies this problem in the case of Lolli [HM94], though its results have application to other systems. We first give a prooftheoretic presentation of the operational semantics of this language as a resolution calculus. We then present a series of resource management systems designed to eliminate the nondeterminism in the distribution of linear formulas that undermines the efficiency of a direct implementation of this system. 1

this paper we present new proofs of cut elimination for intuitionistic and classical sequent calculi and give their representations in the logical framework LF [HHP93] as implemented in the Elf system [Pfe91]. Multi-sets are avoided altogether in these proofs, and termination measures are replaced by three nested structural inductions. Parameters are treated as variables bound in derivations, thus naturally capturing occurrence conditions. A starting point for the proofs is Kleene's sequent system G 3 [Kle52], which we derive systematically from the point of view that a sequent calculus should be a calculus of proof search for natural deductions. It can easily be related to Gentzen's original and other sequent calculi. We augment G 3 with proof terms that are stable under weakening. These proof terms enable the structural induction and furthermore form the basis of the representation of the proof in LF. The most closely related work on cut elimination is Martin-Lo# f 's proof of admissibility [ML68]. In Martin-Lo# f 's system the cut rule incorporates aspects of both weakening and contraction which enables a structural induction argument closely related to ours. However, without the introduction of proof terms, the implicit weakening in the cut rule makes it difficult to implement this proof directly. Herbelin [Her95] restates this proof and proceeds by assigning proof terms only to restricted sequent calculi LJT and LKT which correspond more immediately to