Automated Debugging of Logic Programs via Theory Revision
Raymond J. Mooney, Bradley L. Richards · 1992
This paper presents results on using a theory revision system to automatically debug logic programs. Forte is a recently developed system for revising function-free Horn-clause theories. Given a theory and a set of training examples, it performs a hillclimbing search in an attempt to minimally modify the theory to correctly classify all of the examples. Forte makes use of methods from propositional theory revision, Hornclause induction (Foil), and inverse resolution. The system has has been successfully used to debug logic programs written by undergraduate students for a programming languages course. 1 Introduction Most of the recent work on inductive logic programming has focused on the synthesis of logic programs from examples, e.g. Foil [Quinlan, 1990] and Golem [Muggleton and Feng, 1990]. There has been very little work on automated debugging of logic programs since Shapiro's original work on the subject [Shapiro, 1983]. Although systems like Foil and Golem generally make use of ...