Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

skip to main content
10.1145/800228.806937acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesConference Proceedingsacm-pubtype
Article
Free access

Language facilities for programmable backtracking

Published: 01 August 1977 Publication History

Abstract

Most languages intended for artificial intelligence applications include a search and backtracking facility. While built-in backtracking facilities are convenient, they are often too inflexible for use beyond a limited range of applicability. Other mechanisms, such as those based on explicit manipulations of bindings or stack frames, tend to be very unstructured, and give the programmer little control over the backtracking process. This paper describes the SL5 programming language and its use for “programmable backtracking.” SL5 includes a general procedure mechanism that permits procedures to be used as recursive functions or as coroutines. Using this mechanism, the programmer can construct control hierarchies that are tailored to the specific application. A string pattern-matching facility is given as an example of the use of the SL5 facilities.

References

[1]
D. G. Bobrow and B. Rapheal. New Programming Languages for Artificial Intelligence Research, Comp. Surveys, 6, Sept. 1974, 153-174.
[2]
C. E. Hewitt. PLANNER: A Language for Manipulating Models and Proving Theorems in a Robot, Proc. IJCAI-69, May 1969, 295-301.
[3]
I. Grief and C. E. Hewitt. Actor Semantics for PLANNER-73, Conf. Rec. ACM Symp. on Princ. of Prog. Lang., Jan. 1975, 67-77.
[4]
D. V. McDermott and G. J. Sussman. From PLANNER to CONNIVER - A Genetic Approach, Proc. FJCC, 1972, 1171-1179.
[5]
G. L. Steele. LAMBDA, The Ultimate Declarative, AI Memo 379, Mass. Inst. of Tech., Nov. 1976.
[6]
R. E. Griswold and D. R. Hanson. An Overview of SL5, SIGPLAN Notices, 12, April 1977, 40-50.
[7]
D. R. Hanson and R. E. Griswold. The SL5 Procedure Mechanism, Comm. ACM, to appear.
[8]
F. C. Druseikis and J. N. Doyle. A Procedural Approach to Pattern Matching in SNOBOL4, Proc. ACM Annual Conf., Nov. 1974, 311-317.
[9]
R. E. Griswold. String Analysis and Synthesis in SL5, Proc. ACM Annual Conf., Oct. 1976, 410-414
[10]
R. E. Griswold. The SL5 Programming Language and Its Use for Goal-Directed Programming, Proc. Fifth Texas Conf. on Computing Systems, Oct. 1976, 1-5.
[11]
D. R. Hanson. A Procedure Mechanism for Backtrack Programming, Proc. ACM Annual Conf., Oct. 1976, 401-405.
[12]
C. E. Hewitt and B. Smith. Towards a Programming Apprentice, IEEE Trans. on Software Eng., SE-1, March 1976, 26-45.

Cited By

View all

Recommendations

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
Proceedings of the 1977 symposium on Artificial intelligence and programming languages
August 1977
185 pages
ISBN:9781450378741
DOI:10.1145/800228
  • cover image ACM SIGART Bulletin
    ACM SIGART Bulletin Just Accepted
    Proceedings of the 1977 symposium on Artificial intelligence and programming languages
    August 1977
    179 pages
    ISSN:0163-5719
    DOI:10.1145/872736
    Issue’s Table of Contents
  • cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
    ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 12, Issue 8
    Proceedings of the 1977 symposium on Artificial intelligence and programming languages
    August 1977
    179 pages
    ISSN:0362-1340
    EISSN:1558-1160
    DOI:10.1145/872734
    Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 August 1977

Check for updates

Qualifiers

  • Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)79
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)22
Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Login options

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media