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The YAP Prolog system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2011

VÍTOR SANTOS COSTA ,
RICARDO ROCHA  and
LUÍS DAMAS
VÍTOR SANTOS COSTA
Affiliation:
DCC & CRACS INESC-Porto LA, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, R. do Campo Alegre 1021/1055, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected])
RICARDO ROCHA
Affiliation:
DCC & CRACS INESC-Porto LA, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, R. do Campo Alegre 1021/1055, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected])
LUÍS DAMAS
Affiliation:
LIACC, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, R. do Campo Alegre 1021/1055, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected])
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Abstract

Yet Another Prolog (YAP) is a Prolog system originally developed in the mid-eighties and that has been under almost constant development since then. This paper presents the general structure and design of the YAP system, focusing on three important contributions to the Logic Programming community. First, it describes the main techniques used in YAP to achieve an efficient Prolog engine. Second, most Logic Programming systems have a rather limited indexing algorithm. YAP contributes to this area by providing a dynamic indexing mechanism, or just-in-time indexer. Third, a important contribution of the YAP system has been the integration of both or-parallelism and tabling in a single Logic Programming system.

Keywords

Prologlogic programming system
Type
Regular Papers
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 12 , Special Issue 1-2: Prolog Systems , January 2012 , pp. 5 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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