Logic Continuations (Abstract)

[Chris Haynes <cth%indiana.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>]

The following abstract of a paper, to be delivered at the Third International
Conference on Logic Programming (London, July 1986), may be of interest to the
Scheme community.  The paper is also available as Indiana University Computer
Science Department Technical Report No. 183, and is to appear in The Journal
of Logic Programming in a somewhat revised from.


			    Logic Continuations

			   by Christopher Haynes

We develop a `complete' embedding of logic programming into Scheme---a
lexically scoped Lisp dialect with first-class continuations.  Logic
variables are bound in the Scheme environment and the success and failure
continuations are represented as Scheme continuations.  To account for the
semantics of logic variables and failure continuations, the state-space model
of control is modified in a novel way that generalizes the trail mechanism.
This assures that logic variable bindings are properly restored when
continuations are invoked to perform `lateral' control transfers that are not
possible in a traditional logic programming context.  It is thereby possible
to obtain greater control over logic program behavior by using continuations
as first-class objects.