3 Beyond LOGLISP: combining functional and relational programming in a reduction setting J. A. Robinson

The initial plan for LOGLISP [1] was simply that it would offer, within LISP, a Horn-clause relational programming facility akin to PROLOG. This it does, but with some differences from PROLOG, notably the use of a breadth-first, rather than depth-first, elaboration of the underlying tree of alternative linear proofs, and the consequent avoidance of explicit backtracking as a control mechanism. It was because of these differences that the facility was called LOGIC rather than PROLOG, which would have been misleading. The name LOGLISP then refers to the combined system: LOGIC LISP. It soon became apparent, however, that the main interest of LOGLISP lay rather in its (relatively crude, but genuine) attempt to merge the functional programming style of LISP with the relational programming style of LOGIC and PROLOG. This was done by introducing the notion of'Lisp-transforms' into LOGIC.