[comp.lang.misc] Who knows about J. Robinson?

noekel@uklirb.UUCP (08/04/87)

I recall that in a 1985 paper J. Robinson described an integration of logic and
functional programming languages on the basis of a reduction semantics *only*.
Unification and all the other ramifications of the logic part of the language
had been recast in a reduction setting. As promising further work Robinson
suggested to go all the way and implement the reduction machine using 
combinators a la Turner to achieve better runtime efficiency. He suspected,
though, that unification might be tricky to carry out when all variables have
been abstracted away.

Does anyone know whether Robinson himself or anybody else has followed this
suggestion? Any pointers to functional / logical integrations using combinators
for the whole thing or just for the functional part would be greatly
appreciated as I am preparing a paper on the subject.

 
L where L = "thanks" : L, as we SASL fans say :-)

Klaus Noekel
University of Kaiserslautern
FB Informatik
Postfach 3049

6750 Kaiserslautern

WEST GERMANY

UUCP: ...mcvax!unido!uklirb  Yas	 o

lls@mimsy.UUCP (Lauren L. Smith) (08/06/87)

In article <26400005@uklirb.UUCP>, noekel@uklirb.UUCP writes:
> 
> Does anyone know whether Robinson himself or anybody else has followed this
> suggestion? Any pointers to functional / logical integrations using combinators
> for the whole thing or just for the functional part would be greatly
> appreciated as I am preparing a paper on the subject.

I am familiar with some of the work at Yale.  Paul Hudak's group has done
alot of work with using combinators for evaluating functional languages.
Ben Goldberg did work with combinators to get a parallel reduction engine
on the Intel iPSC.  Juan Guzman is investigating functional/logical
integrations.  I would contact Paul Hudak about all of this work.

Other work - Uday Reddy, John Hughes (Super Combinators), Gary Lindstrom.

- Lauren Smith

ARPA: lls@mimsy.umd.edu