Abstract
SLDNF-resolution is the standard operational semantics for normal programs. Its safeness condition induces a notion of floundering which may be considered as a programming error. But this notion of floundering seems too weak: a program and a goal may flounder despite the existence of an SLDNF-tree and, in such a case, one computation may flounder while another one may not. We propose a novel stronger notion of floundering — called true floundering — which depends only on the existence of an (extended) SLDNF-tree and not on a particular strategy. This notion formalises the idea that the existence of a floundered goal is irrelevant if with another strategy, it would have been possible to continue the computation without floundering. We also introduce a new operational semantics called extended SLDNF-resolution. Extended SLDNF-resolution may be efficiently implemented. Moreover, with a result from Drabent ([Dra94]), extended SLDNF-resolution is complete wrt Kunen semantics for non true floundering programs and goals, which corresponds to a large class of normal programs with a declarative characterization.
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Réty, JH. (1995). The notion of floundering for SLDNF-resolution revisited. In: Hermenegildo, M., Swierstra, S.D. (eds) Programming Languages: Implementations, Logics and Programs. PLILP 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 982. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0026831
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0026831
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