An introduction to partial deduction

Abstract

After several years of neglect, the importance of partial deduction (previously, partial evaluation in logic programming) as an omnipresent principle in Logic Programming, and to a certain degree in computing in general, is being recognized. This article provides a systematic introduction to partial deduction, its applications and open problems. Starting from an informal and intuitive presentation, the fundamental notions such as correctness and completeness are discussed. A selection of applications is presented to illustrate partial deduction in different contexts.