Motivating the Integration of Functional and Logic Programming

Integration of Functional and Logic Programming

• Goal: Add the advantages of both styles of programming.

• Both are declarative: They use mathematics and logic to give a computer solution to a problem.

• Functional Programming:
  • Polymorphic types
  • Higher Order
  • Lazy Evaluation

• Logic Programming
  • Logical Variables
  • Unification
  • Backtracking
  • Deductive inference

• Integrated Languages: Functional Logic Languages

  Exploit more (implementable) facilities of logic:

  • Functions
  • Relations
  • Equality

• Active area of research:

  Several languages proposed (EQLOG, Uniform, Fresh, Funlog, K-LEAF, BABEL, etc.) Semantics (Operational and declarative)

• Interested renovated. Current work on:
  • Design of new programming languages accounting for a mature and up-to-date understanding of previously studied features meant to improve the expressive power of declarative languages (lazy evaluation, higher-order objects, types, object orientation, etc...).
  • Development of efficient implementations. The proposals combine existing techniques from logic programming (e.g., WAM, mode analysis, abstract interpretation) and functional programming (e.g., graph reduction, strictness analysis, optimization of deterministic computations) as well as new techniques (e.g., combination of normalization and narrowing, residuation and coroutining, parallelization).
  • Integration with other paradigms, like the inclusion of constraints, real-time programming, visual programming, etc.

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