Improving Prolog programs: Refactoring for Prolog

Volume 8
Issue 02 - Mar 2008
Add to Basket £30.00 / $45.00
Request Permissions
Cited by Articles (CrossRef)
Cited by Articles (Google Scholar)
Citation Alert
Go to Next Abstract in TOC
Go to Previous Abstract in TOC
Blog this Article close

Copy and paste this code to insert a reference to this article in your blog or online community profile:

Highlight All
<div style="background: #FFFFFF; margin: 10px 10px 10px 10px; padding: 10px 10px 10px 20px; text-align: left; border-top: 1px dashed #a5bbd1; border-left: 10px solid #a5bbd1; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;"><br> <div style="font-size: 12px; padding: 0px 0px 10px 0px; font-weight:bold; color: #003366;">Improving Prolog programs: Refactoring for Prolog</div><br><div style="font-size: 10px;"><b>ALEXANDER SEREBRENIK,TOM SCHRIJVERS and BART DEMOEN (2008).</b><br /> <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=TLP">Theory and Practice of Logic Programming</a>, <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=TLP&volumeId=8&bVolume=y#loc8 ">Volume 8</a>, <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=TLP&volumeId=8&issueId=02&iid=1742104"> Issue 02</a>, March 2008 pp 201-215 <br/> <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=1742104">http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=1742104</a></div></div>
The code will display like this:

Improving Prolog programs: Refactoring for Prolog

ALEXANDER SEREBRENIK, TOM SCHRIJVERS and BART DEMOEN (2008).
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, Volume 8, Issue 02, March 2008 pp 201-215 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=1742104

Blog this Article

Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (2008), 8 : 201-215 Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017/S1471068407003134 (About doi)

Published online by Cambridge University Press 23 May 2007

Social Bookmarking

Cambridge Journals Online - CUP Full-Text Page

Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (2008), 8:201-215 Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017/S1471068407003134

Technical Note

Improving Prolog programs: Refactoring for Prolog

ALEXANDER SEREBRENIK^a1, TOM SCHRIJVERS^a2¹ and BART DEMOEN^a3

^a1Laboratory of Quality of Software (LaQuSo), T.U. Eindhoven, HG 5.91, Den Dolech 2, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands (e-mail: A.Serebrenik@tue.nl)

^a2Department of Computer Science, K.U. Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200A, B-3001, Heverlee, Belgium (e-mail: Tom.Schrijvers@cs.kuleuven.be)

^a3Department of Computer Science, K.U. Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200A, B-3001, Heverlee, Belgium (e-mail: Bart.Demoen@cs.kuleuven.be)

Article author query

serebrenik a

schrijvers t

demoen b

Abstract

Refactoring is an established technique from the object-oriented (OO) programming community to restructure code: it aims at improving software readability, maintainability, and extensibility. Although refactoring is not tied to the OO-paradigm in particular, its ideas have not been applied to logic programming until now. This paper applies the ideas of refactoring to Prolog programs. A catalogue is presented listing refactorings classified according to scope. Some of the refactorings have been adapted from the OO-paradigm, while others have been specifically designed for Prolog. The discrepancy between intended and operational semantics in Prolog is also addressed by some of the refactorings. In addition, ViPReSS, a semi-automatic refactoring browser, is discussed and the experience with applying ViPReSS to a large Prolog legacy system is reported. The main conclusion is that refactoring is both a viable technique in Prolog and a rather desirable one.

(Received December 24 2004)

(Revised August 28 2005)

(Revised September 20 2006)

(Accepted February 12 2007)

Key Words: refactoring; software engineering; program transformation; programming environments; tools

Footnotes

¹ Research Assistant of the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (Belgium) (F.W.O.-Vlaanderen).

Username or Email Address	Password