arXiv subjects

Michael Hanus

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Hanus.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Monadic Implementation of Functional Logic Programs

Functional logic languages are a high-level approach to programming by combining the most important declarative features. They abstract from small-step operational details so that programmers can concentrate on the logical aspects of an application. This is supported by appropriate evaluation strategies. Demand-driven evaluation from functional programming is amalgamated with non-determinism from logic programming so that solutions or values are computed whenever they exist. This frees the programmer from considering the influence of an operational strategy on the success of a computation, but it is a challenge to the language implementer. A non-deterministic demand-driven strategy might duplicate unevaluated choices of an expression, which could duplicate the computational effort. In recent implementations, this problem has been tackled by adding a kind of memoization of non-deterministic choices to the expression under evaluation. Since this has been implemented in imperative target languages, it was unclear whether this could also be supported in a functional programming environment like Haskell. This paper presents a solution to this challenge by transforming functional logic programs into a monadic representation. Although this transformation is not new, we present an implementation of the monadic interface which supports memoization in non-deterministic branches. Additionally, we include more advanced features of functional logic languages, namely functional patterns and encapsulated search, in our approach. By optimizing our implementation for purely functional computations with both a static and dynamic approach, we are able to achieve a promising performance that outperforms current compilers for Curry.

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arXiv2026

Functional Logic Program Transformations

Many tools used to process programs, like compilers, analyzers, or verifiers, perform transformations on their intermediate program representation, like abstract syntax trees. Implementing such program transformations is a non-trivial task, since it is necessary to iterate over the complete syntax tree and apply various transformations at nodes in a tree. In this paper we show how the features of functional logic programming are useful to implement program transformations in a compact and comprehensible manner. For this purpose, we propose to write program transformations as partially defined and non-deterministic operations. Since the implementation of non-determinism usually causes some overhead compared to deterministically defined operations, we compare our approach to a deterministic transformation method. We evaluate these alternatives for the functional logic language Curry and its intermediate representation FlatCurry which is used in various analysis and verification tools and compilers.

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arXiv2024

Inferring Non-Failure Conditions for Declarative Programs

Unintended failures during a computation are painful but frequent during software development. Failures due to external reasons (e.g., missing files, no permissions) can be caught by exception handlers. Programming failures, such as calling a partially defined operation with unintended arguments, are often not caught due to the assumption that the software is correct. This paper presents an approach to verify such assumptions. For this purpose, non-failure conditions for operations are inferred and then checked in all uses of partially defined operations. In the positive case, the absence of such failures is ensured. In the negative case, the programmer could adapt the program to handle possibly failing situations and check the program again. Our method is fully automatic and can be applied to larger declarative programs. The results of an implementation for functional logic Curry programs are presented.

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arXiv2022

From Logic to Functional Logic Programs

Logic programming is a flexible programming paradigm due to the use of predicates without a fixed data flow. To extend logic languages with the compact notation of functional programming, there are various proposals to map evaluable functions into predicates in order to stay in the logic programming framework. Since amalgamated functional logic languages offer flexible as well as efficient evaluation strategies, we propose an opposite approach in this paper. By mapping logic programs into functional logic programs with a transformation based on inferring functional dependencies, we develop a fully automatic transformation which keeps the flexibility of logic programming but can improve computations by reducing infinite search spaces to finite ones.

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arXiv2020

Pre-Proceedings of the 28th International Workshop on Functional and Logic Programming (WFLP 2020)

This volume constitutes the pre-proceedings of the 28th International Workshop on Functional and Logic Programming (WFLP 2020), organized by the University of Bologna, Italy, as part of Bologna Federated Conference on Programming Languages 2020. The international Workshop on Functional and (constraint) Logic Programming (WFLP) aims at bringing together researchers, students, and practitioners interested in functional programming, logic programming, and their integration. WFLP has a reputation for being a lively and friendly forum, and it is open for presenting and discussing work in progress, technical contributions, experience reports, experiments, reviews, and system descriptions.

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arXiv2020

Memoized Pull-Tabbing for Functional Logic Programming

Pull-tabbing is an evaluation technique for functional logic programs which computes all non-deterministic results in a single graph structure. Pull-tab steps are local graph transformations to move non-deterministic choices towards the root of an expression. Pull-tabbing is independent of a search strategy so that different strategies (depth-first, breadth-first, parallel) can be used to extract the results of a computation. It has been used to compile functional logic languages into imperative or purely functional target languages. Pull-tab steps might duplicate choices in case of shared subexpressions. This could result in a dramatic increase of execution time compared to a backtracking implementation. In this paper we propose a refinement which avoids this efficiency problem while keeping all the good properties of pull-tabbing. We evaluate a first implementation of this improved technique in the Julia programming language.

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arXiv2019

Equivalence Checking of Non-deterministic Operations

Checking the semantic equivalence of operations is an important task in software development. For instance, regression testing is a routine task performed when software systems are developed and improved, and software package managers require the equivalence of operations in different versions of a package within the same major number version. A solid foundation is required to support a good automation of this process. It has been shown that the notion of equivalence is not obvious when non-deterministic features are present. In this paper, we discuss a general notion of equivalence in functional logic programs and develop a practical method to check it. Our method is integrated in a property-based testing tool which is used in a software package manager to check the semantic versioning of software packages.

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arXiv2019

ICurry

FlatCurry is a well-established intermediate representation of Curry programs used in compilers that translate Curry code into Prolog and Haskell code. Some FlatCurry constructs have no direct translation into imperative code. These constructs must be each handled differently when translating Curry code into C, C++ and Python code. We introduce a new representation of Curry programs, called ICurry, and derive a translation from all FlatCurry constructs into ICurry. We present the syntax of ICurry and the translation from FlatCurry to ICurry. We present a model of functional logic computations as graph rewriting, show how this model can be implemented in a low-level imperative language, and describe the translation from ICurry to this model.

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arXiv2019

Adding Data to Curry

Functional logic languages can solve equations over user-defined data and functions. Thus, the definition of an appropriate meaning of equality has a long history in these languages, ranging from reflexive equality in early equational logic languages to strict equality in contemporary functional logic languages like Curry. With the introduction of type classes, where the equality operation "==" is overloaded and user-defined, the meaning became more complex. Moreover, logic variables appearing in equations require a different typing than pattern variables, since the latter might be instantiated with functional values or non-terminating operations. In this paper, we present a solution to these problems by introducing a new type class "Data" which is associated with specific algebraic data types, logic variables, and strict equality. We discuss the ideas of this class and its implications on various concepts of Curry, like unification, functional patterns, and program optimization.

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arXiv2018

Synthesizing Set Functions

Set functions are a feature of functional logic programming to encapsulate all results of a non-deterministic computation in a single data structure. Given a function $f$ of a functional logic program written in Curry, we describe a technique to synthesize the definition of the set function of $f$. The definition produced by our technique is based on standard Curry constructs. Our approach is interesting for three reasons. It allows reasoning about set functions, it offers an implementation of set functions which can be added to any Curry system, and it has the potential of changing our thinking about the implementation of non-determinism, a notoriously difficult problem.

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arXiv2017

Combining Static and Dynamic Contract Checking for Curry

Static type systems are usually not sufficient to express all requirements on function calls. Hence, contracts with pre- and postconditions can be used to express more complex constraints on operations. Contracts can be checked at run time to ensure that operations are only invoked with reasonable arguments and return intended results. Although such dynamic contract checking provides more reliable program execution, it requires execution time and could lead to program crashes that might be detected with more advanced methods at compile time. To improve this situation for declarative languages, we present an approach to combine static and dynamic contract checking for the functional logic language Curry. Based on a formal model of contract checking for functional logic programming, we propose an automatic method to verify contracts at compile time. If a contract is successfully verified, dynamic checking of it can be omitted. This method decreases execution time without degrading reliable program execution. In the best case, when all contracts are statically verified, it provides trust in the software since crashes due to contract violations cannot occur during program execution.

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arXiv2017

Proving Non-Deterministic Computations in Agda

We investigate proving properties of Curry programs using Agda. First, we address the functional correctness of Curry functions that, apart from some syntactic and semantic differences, are in the intersection of the two languages. Second, we use Agda to model non-deterministic functions with two distinct and competitive approaches incorporating the non-determinism. The first approach eliminates non-determinism by considering the set of all non-deterministic values produced by an application. The second approach encodes every non-deterministic choice that the application could perform. We consider our initial experiment a success. Although proving properties of programs is a notoriously difficult task, the functional logic paradigm does not seem to add any significant layer of difficulty or complexity to the task.

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arXiv2017

A Typeful Integration of SQL into Curry

We present an extension of the declarative programming language Curry to support the access to data stored in relational databases via SQL. Since Curry is statically typed, our emphasis on this SQL integration is on type safety. Our extension respects the type system of Curry so that run-time errors due to ill-typed data are avoided. This is obtained by preprocessing SQL statements at compile time and translating them into type-safe database access operations. As a consequence, the type checker of the Curry system can spot type errors in SQL statements at compile time. To generate appropriately typed access operations, the preprocessor uses an entity-relationship (ER) model describing the structure of the relational data. In addition to standard SQL, SQL statements embedded in Curry can include program expressions and also relationships specified in the ER model. The latter feature is useful to avoid the error-prone use of foreign keys. As a result, our SQL integration supports a high-level and type-safe access to databases in Curry programs.

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arXiv2016

CurryCheck: Checking Properties of Curry Programs

We present CurryCheck, a tool to automate the testing of programs written in the functional logic programming language Curry. CurryCheck executes unit tests as well as property tests which are parameterized over one or more arguments. In the latter case, CurryCheck tests these properties by systematically enumerating test cases so that, for smaller finite domains, CurryCheck can actually prove properties. Unit tests and properties can be defined in a Curry module without being exported. Thus, they are also useful to document the intended semantics of the source code. Furthermore, CurryCheck also supports the automated checking of specifications and contracts occurring in source programs. Hence, CurryCheck is a useful tool that contributes to the property- and specification-based development of reliable and well tested declarative programs.

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arXiv2016

Default Rules for Curry

In functional logic programs, rules are applicable independently of textual order, i.e., any rule can potentially be used to evaluate an expression. This is similar to logic languages and contrary to functional languages, e.g., Haskell enforces a strict sequential interpretation of rules. However, in some situations it is convenient to express alternatives by means of compact default rules. Although default rules are often used in functional programs, the non-deterministic nature of functional logic programs does not allow to directly transfer this concept from functional to functional logic languages in a meaningful way. In this paper we propose a new concept of default rules for Curry that supports a programming style similar to functional programming while preserving the core properties of functional logic programming, i.e., completeness, non-determinism, and logic-oriented use of functions. We discuss the basic concept and propose an implementation which exploits advanced features of functional logic languages.

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arXiv2013

A Generic Analysis Server System for Functional Logic Programs

We present a system, called CASS, for the analysis of functional logic programs. The system is generic so that various kinds of analyses (e.g., groundness, non-determinism, demanded arguments) can be easily integrated. In order to analyze larger applications consisting of dozens or hundreds of modules, CASS supports a modular and incremental analysis of programs. Moreover, it can be used by different programming tools, like documentation generators, analysis environments, program optimizers, as well as Eclipse-based development environments. For this purpose, CASS can also be invoked as a server system to get a language-independent access to its functionality. CASS is completely implemented in the functional logic language Curry as a master/worker architecture to exploit parallel or distributed execution environments.

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arXiv2011

Implementing Equational Constraints in a Functional Language

KiCS2 is a new system to compile functional logic programs of the source language Curry into purely functional Haskell programs. The implementation is based on the idea to represent the search space as a data structure and logic variables as operations that generate their values. This has the advantage that one can apply various, and in particular, complete search strategies to compute solutions. However, the generation of all values for logic variables might be inefficient for applications that exploit constraints on partially known values. To overcome this drawback, we propose new techniques to implement equational constraints in this framework. In particular, we show how unification modulo function evaluation and functional patterns can be added without sacrificing the efficiency of the kernel implementation.

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arXiv2011

An ER-based Framework for Declarative Web Programming

We describe a framework to support the implementation of web-based systems intended to manipulate data stored in relational databases. Since the conceptual model of a relational database is often specified as an entity-relationship (ER) model, we propose to use the ER model to generate a complete implementation in the declarative programming language Curry. This implementation contains operations to create and manipulate entities of the data model, supports authentication, authorization, session handling, and the composition of individual operations to user processes. Furthermore, the implementation ensures the consistency of the database w.r.t. the data dependencies specified in the ER model, i.e., updates initiated by the user cannot lead to an inconsistent state of the database. In order to generate a high-level declarative implementation that can be easily adapted to individual customer requirements, the framework exploits previous works on declarative database programming and web user interface construction in Curry.

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