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International Workshop on Functional and Constraint Logic Programming

Workshop on Logic Programming

International Conference on Applications of Declarative Programming and Knowledge Management

WFLP 2017, WLP 2017, INAP 2017: Declarative Programming and Knowledge Management pp 198–213Cite as

plspec – A Specification Language for Prolog Data

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10997))

Abstract

In general, even though Prolog is a dynamically typed language, predicates may not be called with arbitrarily typed arguments. Assumptions regarding type or mode are often made implicitly, without being directly represented in the source code. This complicates identifying the types or data structures anticipated by predicates. In consequence, Covington et al. proposed that Prolog developers should implement their own runtime type checking system.

In this paper, we present a re-usable Prolog library named plspec. It offers a simple and easily extensible DSL used to specify type and structure of input and output arguments. Additionally, an elegant insertion of multiple kinds of runtime checks was made possible by using Prolog language features such as co-routining and term expansion. Furthermore, we will discuss performance impacts and possible future usages.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Informatik, Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Philipp Körner & Sebastian Krings

Authors
  1. Philipp Körner
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  2. Sebastian Krings
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Correspondence to Philipp Körner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universität Würzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany

    Dietmar Seipel

  2. Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Michael Hanus

  3. Universidade de Èvora, Evora, Portugal

    Salvador Abreu

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Körner, P., Krings, S. (2018). plspec – A Specification Language for Prolog Data. In: Seipel, D., Hanus, M., Abreu, S. (eds) Declarative Programming and Knowledge Management. WFLP WLP INAP 2017 2017 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10997. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00801-7_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00801-7_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00800-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00801-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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