Skeletons and Techniques as a Normative Approach to Program Development
in Logic-based Languages
Marc Kirschenbaum
John Carroll University,
Cleveland, OH 44118, U.S.A.
kirsch@jcvaxa.jcu.edu
Spiro Michaylov
Department of Computer and Information Science,
The Ohio State University,
228 Bolz Hall,
2036 Neil Avenue Mall,
Columbus, OH 43210-1277, U.S.A.
spiro@cis.ohio-state.edu
Leon Sterling
Department of Computer Engineering and Science,
Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, OH 44106, U.S.A.
leon@ces.cwru.edu
Abstract
To help encourage the wide use of a variety of logic-based languages,
we advocate the identification and use of systematic program
construction methods. Our approach is to capture programming idioms
in the form of skeletons, or basic control flows, and standard
programming techniques for construction and manipulation of data
structures. We argue that the approach, coming initially from Prolog
and logic grammars, is equally applicable in the context of
constraints, committed-choice and higher order constructs, and indeed
logic-based languages in general. This paper introduces our generalized
view of skeletons and techniques, gives examples of the breadth of
their applicability, and explores positive consequences for program
development.
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