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Comparing the Expressive Powers of Some Syntactically Restricted Classes of Logic Programs

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Computational Logic — CL 2000 (CL 2000)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1861))

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Abstract

This paper studies the expressive powers of classes of logic programs that are obtained by restricting the number of positive literals (atoms) in the bodies of the rules. Three kinds of restrictions are considered, giving rise to the classes of atomic, unary and binary logic programs. The expressive powers of these classes of logic programs are compared by analyzing the existence of polynomial, faithful, and modular (PFM) translation functions between the classes. This analysis leads to a strict ordering of the classes of logic programs. The main result is that binary and unary rules are strictly more expressive than unary and atomic rules, respectively. This is the case even if we consider normal logic programs where negative literals may appear in the bodies of rules. Practical implications of the results are discussed in the context of a particular implementation technique for the stable model semantics of normal logic programs, namely contrapositive reasoning with rules.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Theoretical Computer Science, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O.B. 5400, FIN-02015 HUT, Finland

    Tomi Janhunen

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  1. Tomi Janhunen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Australian National University, Australia

    John Lloyd

  2. Simon Fraser University, Canada

    Veronica Dahl

  3. Universität Koblenz, Germany

    Ulrich Furbach

  4. The University of Birmingham, UK

    Manfred Kerber

  5. University of Manchester, UK

    Kung-Kiu Lau

  6. The Pennsylvania State University, USA

    Catuscia Palamidessi

  7. Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

    Luís Moniz Pereira

  8. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

    Yehoshua Sagiv

  9. The University of Melbourne, Australia

    Peter J. Stuckey

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Janhunen, T. (2000). Comparing the Expressive Powers of Some Syntactically Restricted Classes of Logic Programs. In: Lloyd, J., et al. Computational Logic — CL 2000. CL 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1861. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44957-4_57

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44957-4_57

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67797-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44957-7

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