A Recursive Techniques Editor for Prolog

Abstract

We describe an editor geared to recursive Prolog procedures. It is similar to the structure editors built for many programming languages, except that instead of just ensuring the correctness of the syntax of the procedures built by the editor, the editor also ensures the correct use of recursion. By correct here we mean that the recursive procedure is guaranteed to terminate and to be well-defined. Within these constraints we have tried to ensure that the range of procedures that can be built is as complete as possible.