Evaluation strategies for functional logic programming.pdfVIP

International Workshop on Reduction Strategies in Rewriting and Programming, (WRS’01), Utrecht, The Netherlands, May 2001, pages 1-17. Evaluation Strategies for Functional Logic Programming ? Sergio Antoy Department of Computer Science, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207, U.S.A. f antoyg @ Abstract. Recent advances in the foundations and the development of func- tional logic programming languages originate from far-rea ching results on nar- rowing evaluation strategies. Narrowing is a computation similar to rewriting which yields substitutions in addition to normal forms. In functional logic pro- gramming, the classes of rewrite systems to which narrowing is applied are, for the most part, subclasses of the constructor-based, possibly conditional, rewrite systems. Many interesting narrowing strategies, particularly for the smallest sub- classes of the constructor-based rewrite systems, are generalizations of well- known rewrite strategies. However, some strategies for larger non-confluents sub- classes have been developed just for functional logic computations. In this paper, I will discuss the elements that play a relevant role in evaluation strategies for functional logic programming, describe some important classes of rewrite sys- tems that model functional logic programs, show examples of the differences in expressiveness provided by these classes, and review the characteristics of nar- rowing strategies proposed for each class of rewrite system s. 1 Introduction Functional logic programming studies programming languages that join in a sin- gle paradigm the features of funct