Compiling Mercury to High-Level C Code

Abstract

Many logic programming implementations compile to C, but they compile to very low-level C, and thus discard many of the advantages of compiling to a high-level language. We describe an alternative approach to compiling logic programs to C, based on continuation passing, that we have used in a new back-end for the Mercury compiler. The new approach compiles to much higher-level C code, which means the compiler back-end and run-time system can be considerably simpler. We present a formal schema for the transformation, and give benchmark results which show that this approach delivers performance that is more than competitive with the fastest previous implementation, with greater simplicity and better portability and interoperability. The approach we describe can also be used for compiling to other target languages, such as IL (the Microsoft .NET intermediate language).

Description and Optimization of Abstract Machines in a Dialect of Prolog

“…Another compilation scheme which produces similar code is described in Henderson and Somogyi (2002). There are, however, significant differences, of which we will mention just a few.…”

Prolog: A Linguagem, A Máquina Abstrata de Warren e Implementações

“…Utilizando uma abordagem totalmente diferente, Mercury [80,1] mudou a linguagem. O objetivo foi melhorar o desempenho de programas lógicos.…”

“…Linguagens que implementam programação lógica [1,2] possuem uma clara correspondência à lógica matemática e expressam a computação sem descrever o seu fluxo de controle. Em outras palavras, a descrição do programa é baseada em "o que" realizar, em vez de "como" realizar, ao contrário do que ocorre na programação imperativa [3].…”

Improved Compilation of Prolog to C Using Moded Types and Determinism Information

“…This requires a somewhat different translation to C (which we do not have space to describe in full) and which takes into account this possibility by bypassing the emulator loop, in several senses similarly to what is presented in [HS02].…”