Compiling Control as Offline Partial Deduction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to implement compiling control in logic programming by using a Prolog meta-interpreter and offline partial deduction, simplifying the synthesis process and aligning with the first Futamura projection.

Contribution

It proposes a Prolog meta-interpreter for compiling control that can be specialized via offline partial deduction, connecting it to the first Futamura projection.

Findings

The specialized interpreter is equivalent to traditional compiling control programs.

The approach simplifies the synthesis step of compiling control.

It demonstrates the feasibility of using offline partial deduction for this purpose.

Abstract

We present a new approach to a technique known as compiling control, whose aim is to compile away special mechanisms for non-standard atom selection in logic programs. It has previously been conjectured that compiling control could be implemented as an instance of the first Futamura projection, in which an interpreter is specialized for an input program. However, the exact nature of such an interpreter and of the required technique for specialization were never specified. In this work, we propose a Prolog meta-interpreter which applies the desired non-standard selection rule and which is amenable to specialization using offline partial deduction. After the initial analysis phase of compiling control, we collect annotations to specialize the interpreter using the Logen system for offline partial deduction. We also show that the result of the specialization is equivalent to the program obtained using the traditional approach to compiling control. In this way, we simplify the synthesis step.