Guest editors' introduction Special Issue: synthesis, transformation and analysis of logic programs 2

Annalisa Bossi, Yves Deville
1999 The Journal of Logic Programming  
This volume contains the second part of the Special Issue on Synthesis, Transformation and Analysis of Logic Programs. The ®rst part on program analysis appeared in Vol 39(1±3). The second part includes contributions on program synthesis and program transformation. Program Synthesis, in a broad way, refers to the elaboration of a program in some systematic manner, starting from a (nonexecutable) speci®cation. Program synthesis mainly focuses on automated or semi-automated synthesis. Program
more » ... sformation deals with the successive transformations of a given program into equivalent but "better" programs. Usually, the adjective "better"' refers to "more ecient" with respect to some operational semantics. The borderline between synthesis and transformation is very thin and rather subjective. A possible dierence could be that synthesis starts from speci®cations written in some richer logical languages. There are four contributions on program synthesis and program transformation published in this volume. The ®rst paper, Inductive synthesis of recursive logic programs: achievements and prospects, by Pierre Flener and Serap Yõlmaz overviews the achievements of inductive synthesis of logic programs from incomplete speci®cations. This paper focusses on the synthesis of recursive programs. It also debates the practical applicability of these techniques in two application areas: knowledge discovery and software engineering. The borderline between synthesis and transformation, which is very thin, is even thinner in a logic programming context. In fact, in this environment the same transformations we can use to get a more ecient program from an initial one can be applied to logic speci®cations which are not executable, as they are. This is shown in the
doi:10.1016/s0743-1066(99)00027-8 fatcat:tjzp4frx7beozeujr7ndjxa3iu