arXiv · 1607.01590
Indexing dif/2
Abstract
Many Prolog programs are unnecessarily impure because of inadequate means to express syntactic inequality. While the frequently provided built-in `dif/2` is able to correctly describe expected answers, its direct use in programs often leads to overly complex and inefficient definitions --- mainly due to the lack of adequate indexing mechanisms. We propose to overcome these problems by using a new predicate that subsumes both equality and inequality via reification. Code complexity is reduced with a monotonic, higher-order if-then-else construct based on `call/N`. For comparable correct uses of impure definitions, our approach is as determinate and similarly efficient as its impure counterparts.
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Ulrich Neumerkel, Stefan Kral. 2016-07-06. Indexing dif/2. https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01590
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