Composing general logic programs

Abstract

The program composition approach can be fruitfully applied to combine general logic programs, i.e. logic programs possibly containing negative premises. We show how the introduction of a basic set of (metalevel) composition operations over general programs increases the knowledge representation capabilities of logic prograxaming for non-monotonic reasoning. Examples of modular programming, hierarchical reasoning, constraints, and rules with exceptions will be illustrated. The semantics of programs and program compositions is defined in terms of three-valued logic [15]. The computational interpretation of program compositions is formalised by an equivalence preserving syntactic transformation of arbitrary program compositions into standard general programs.