Abstract
Automatically specialising an algorithm for unification is a challenge to current techniques for partial evaluation. In this paper a study is made of several specialisations of unification that are typically needed. The limitations of existing partial evaluation techniques are examined and proposals for extensions are made. Partial evaluation is modified by adding condition goals which are used to evaluate or prune more of the computation tree than is possible with partial evaluation alone. It is shown that abstract substitutions can be introduced to allow information from infinite computation trees to be exploited. If infinite failures are removed from the computation tree the resulting specialised program does not preserve the procedural semantics given by SLDNF (which defines negation by finite failure). There is a short discussion on correctness results for such specialisations.
Work supported by ESPRIT II project PRINCE (5246)
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© 1992 Springer-Verlag London
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de Waal, D.A., Gallagher, J. (1992). Specialisation of a Unification Algorithm. In: Clement, T.P., Lau, KK. (eds) Logic Program Synthesis and Transformation. Workshops in Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3494-7_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3494-7_15
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-19742-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-3494-7
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