Logic programming and logarithmic space

Abstract

We present an algebraic view on logic programming, related to proof theory and more specifically linear logic and geometry of interaction. Within this construction, a characterization of logspace (deterministic and non-deterministic) computation is given via a syntactic restriction, using an encoding of words that derives from proof theory. We show that the acceptance of a word by an observation (the counterpart of a program in the encoding) can be decided within logarithmic space, by reducing this problem to the acyclicity of a graph. We show moreover that observations are as expressive as two-ways multihead finite automata, a kind of pointer machine that is a standard model of logarithmic space computation.