Abstract

We describe a rule-based programming system where rules specify nondeterministic computations. The system is called FunLog and has constructs for defining elementary rules, and to build up complex rules from simpler ones via operations akin to the standard operations from abstract rewriting. The system has been implemented in Mathematica and is, in particular, useful to program procedures which can be encoded as sequences of rule applications which follow a certain reduction strategy. In particular, the procedures for unification with sequence variables in free, flat, and restricted flat theories can be specified via a set of inference rules which should be applied in accordance with a certain strategy. We illustrate how these unification procedures can be expressed in our framework.

Citations