An Overview of Lambda-Prolog

λ-Prolog is a logic programming language that extends Prolog by incorporating notions of higher-order functions, λ-terms, higher-order unification, polymorphic types, and mechanisms for building modules and secure abstract data types. These new features are provided in a principled fashion by extending the classical first-order theory of Horn clauses to the intuitionistic higher-order theory of hereditary Harrop formulas. The justification for considering this extension a satisfactory logic programming language is provided through the proof-theoretic notion of a uniform proof. The correspondence between each extension to Prolog and the new features in the stronger logical theory is discussed. Also discussed are various aspects of an experimental implementation of λ-Prolog

Abstractions in Logic Programs

Most logic programming languages have the first-order, classical theory of Horn clauses as their logical foundation. Purely proof-theoretical considerations show that Horn clauses are not rich enough to naturally provide the abstraction mechanisms that are common in most modern, general purpose programming languages. For example, Horn clauses do not incorporate the important software abstraction mechanisms of modules, data type abstractions, and higher-order programming. As a result of this lack, implementers of logic programming languages based on Horn clauses generally add several nonlogical primitives on top of Horn clauses to provide these missing abstraction mechanisms. Although the missing features are often captured in this fashion, formal semantics of the resulting languages are often lacking or are very complex. Another approach to providing these missing features is to enrich the underlying logical foundation of logic programming. This latter approach to providing logic programs with these missing abstraction mechanisms is taken in this paper. The enrichments we will consider have simple and direct operational and proof theoretical semantics

Proof search in constructive logics

We present an overview of some sequent calculi organised not for "theorem-proving" but for proof search, where the proofs themselves (and the avoidance of known proofs on backtracking) are objects of interest. The main calculus discussed is that of Herbelin [1994] for intuitionistic logic, which extends methods used in hereditary Harrop logic programming; we give a brief discussion of similar calculi for other logics. We also point out to some related work on permutations in intuitionistic Gentzen sequent calculi that clarifies the relationship between such calculi and natural deduction.Centro de Matemática da Universidade do Minho (CMAT).União Europeia (UE) - Programa ESPRIT - BRA 7232 Gentzen

Logic Programming Based on Higher-Order Hereditary Harrop Formulas

Hereditary Harrop formulas are an extension to Horn clauses in which the body of clauses can contain implications and universal quantifiers. These formulas can further be extended by embedding them in a higher-order logic; that is, by permitting quantification over function symbol occurrences and some predicate symbol occurrences, and by replacing first-order terms with simply typed λ-terms. Our justification for considering this rich extension of Horn clause theory as a satisfactory logic programming language is provided by a proof-theoretic notion we call uniform proofs . This notion will be defined and motivated. This extended language can provide very natural and direct implementations of various kinds of abstraction mechanisms. For example, higher-order hereditary Harrop formulas (hohh) can be used to support aspects of modular programming, abstract data types, and higher-order programming. We have designed and built a logic programming system which implements hohh in much the same way Prolog implements first-order Horn clauses. This language and its interpreter, collectively called λProlog, will be described. We will present several example programs where λProlog provides a much more immediate and satisfactory implementation language than first-order Prologs. These examples are taken from theorem proving and program transformation. Finally, we will describe some aspects of our implementation of λProlog