CTI: A Tool for Automatically Inferring Termination Properties in Logic Programs

Title: cTI: A Tool for Automatically Inferring Termination Properties in Logic Programs

Research Question: Can we develop a tool that can automatically infer termination properties for logic programs, without requiring user annotations or recomputation?

Methodology: The researchers developed cTI, a constraint-based termination inference tool for ISO-Prolog. They used a bottom-up approach to termination, which means they started by analyzing the individual predicates in a program and then combined their results to infer termination properties for the entire program.

Results: The researchers reported an extensive experimental evaluation of cTI, covering many classical examples from the logic programming termination literature and several Prolog programs of respectable size and complexity. They found that cTI was able to infer termination properties accurately and efficiently.

Implications: The development of cTI has significant implications for the field of logic programming. It provides a practical solution to the problem of termination analysis, which has been a challenge in this field. It also sets a new standard for termination inference tools, as it is the first system to offer universal left-termination inference, which is a more robust and useful concept than existential termination. This means that developers can now rely on cTI to ensure that their logic programs will terminate in a predictable and efficient manner.

Link to Article: https://arxiv.org/abs/0309028v1 Authors: arXiv ID: 0309028v1