gienah@gentoo.org
Mark Wright
The Teyjus system is an efficient implementation of the higher-order
logic programming language Lambda Prolog. The main strength of Lambda
Prolog, a language developed by Dale Miller and Gopalan Nadathur, is
the support it offers for what is known as lambda tree syntax, a new
and effective way to view the structure of complex syntactic objects
such as types, formulas, proofs and programs. Lambda Prolog provides
this support by using lambda terms as data representation devices and
by including primitives for probing such terms in logically meaningful
ways. The new features present in the language raise several
implementation challenges that have been addressed in collaborative
work between Nadathur and his students and colleagues. The name
"Teyjus" actually stands both for a project and for a class of
compiler and virtual machine based realizations of Lambda Prolog
arising from the research carried out within this project. Underlying
the most recent version of the Teyjus system is a new and
significantly improved virtual machine that has been designed by
Xiaochu Qi as part of her doctoral dissertation work at the University
of Minnesota. This virtual machine extensively exploits a special form
of higher-order unification known as pattern unification.