Using Logic Programming for Compiling APL
Read PDF →Derby, 1984
Category: Compilers
Overall Rating
Score Breakdown
- Cross Disciplinary Applicability: 5/10
- Latent Novelty Potential: 4/10
- Obscurity Advantage: 4/5
- Technical Timeliness: 3/10
Synthesized Summary
While the paradigm of declarative semantics for inference is theoretically interesting, the practical implementation details, severe prototype limitations, and known theoretical hurdles described make this specific approach non-viable for modern high-performance compilers or broader dynamic system analysis...
It's more valuable as a historical example of a specific path explored, and largely abandoned for practical reasons.
Interesting academic concepts are presented (declarative semantic specification, instance management for dynamic properties) that might offer novel perspectives on state exploration or formal analysis in niche areas...
...but the paper's core compiler architecture using Prolog/rewrite rules as implemented is too flawed, incomplete, and restrictive to serve as a practical blueprint for modern research or applications.
Optimist's View
The core idea of using logic programming and rewrite rules to declaratively specify language semantics... and drive compiler inference and intermediate code generation is not a mainstream approach in modern compilers.
The method of managing dynamic properties and control flow through "instance management"... presents a unique approach to specializing code for dynamic languages.
The application of using a declarative, logic-programming-based system with rewrite rules to define the properties and transformations of complex, dynamic data structures... has potential applications beyond programming language compilation.
More importantly, the output of this declarative analysis... could feed into modern, highly sophisticated compiler backends and optimizers...
Skeptic's View
Prolog and logic programming... never became a dominant paradigm for mainstream compiler construction...
This paper was almost certainly forgotten because it describes a severely limited prototype that failed to achieve a practically usable state.
The explicit list of missing features... and the fundamental restrictions imposed on the APL source code... render it incapable of compiling anything but trivial APL programs...
The instance generation and merging strategy for control flow... is described as potentially leading to exponential explosion... and relies on heuristic merging with uncertain correctness conditions.
Final Takeaway / Relevance
Watch