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SICStus Prolog—The first 25 years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2011

MATS CARLSSON  and
PER MILDNER
MATS CARLSSON
Affiliation:
SICS, P.O. Box 1263, SE-164 29 Kista, Sweden (e-mail: matsc@sics.se)
PER MILDNER
Affiliation:
SICS, P.O. Box 1263, SE-164 29 Kista, Sweden (e-mail: matsc@sics.se)
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Abstract

SICStus Prolog has evolved for nearly 25 years. This is an appropriate point in time for revisiting the main language and design decisions, and try to distill some lessons. SICStus Prolog was conceived in a context of multiple, conflicting Prolog dialect camps and a fledgling standardization effort. We reflect on the impact of this effort and role model implementations on our development. After summarizing the development history, we give a guided tour of the system anatomy, exposing some designs that were not published before. We give an overview of our new interactive development environment, and describe a sample of key applications. Finally, we try to identify key good and not so good design decisions.

Keywords

Prologlogic programming systemvirtual machinecompilersmemory management
Type
Regular Papers
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 12 , Special Issue 1-2: Prolog Systems , January 2012 , pp. 35 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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