RULE-BASED PROGRAMMING WITH RHOLOG

Mircea Marin (West University of Timisoara)

In this lecture I will introduce the ρLog calculus, a computational model for rule-based programming with reduction strategies. Programs consist of labeled conditional rewrite rules with constraints, which are specified in a logic that is more expressive than FOL. It supports a highly declarative programming style with the following remarkable features:

1. it generalizes both functional programming and logic programming; thus, it is adequate both computation and deduction

2. it has a specification language with sequence variables and context variables, which enable natural and concise specifications with rules

3. it provides strategies, to control the process of calculation.

The lecture consists two parts. In the first part, I will describe the theoretical foundations of the ρLog calculus and its main properties. In the second part, I will describe two concrete implementations of ρLog:

• RhoLog, a Mathematica package,

• PρLog, an experimental tool that extends logic programming with strategic conditional transformation rules,

and will present some applications.