Assumptions and Abduction in Prolog
Henning Christiansen, Verónica Dahl · 2004
Abstract. Abduction is agreed upon as a powerful technique in logic programming but its actual use in practice appears to be rather limited since most available systems are research prototypes implemented using inefficient metaprogramming techniques. Assumptive logic programming is related to abduction but provides explicit creation and consumption of hypotheses plus scoping principles inspired by linear logic. We show how a class of abductive logic programs (and assumptive logic programs) can be executed directly in Prolog using a trivial extension for abducible predicates (and assumptions) written in Constraint Handling Rules; this version of assumptions extends earlier approaches with integrity constraints. The motivation behind the present work is to show that abduction and assumptions can be integrated with traditional Prolog programs without any significant slow-down in execution speed or other burdens for the programmer. 1