Multiparadigm programming: Novel devices for implementing functional and logic programming constructs in C++

• Main Author: McNamara, Brian
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: Georgia Institute of Technology 2005
• Subjects: Domain-specific embedded language; C++; Logic programming; Multiparadigm programming; Functional programming; Object-oriented programming; Functional programming languages; Multiparadigm programming (Computer science); Logic programming languages; C++ (Computer program language)
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1853/5073

Constructs for functional and logic programming can be smoothly integrated into an existing object-oriented language. We demonstrate this in the context of C++ (a statically-typed object-oriented language with effects and parametric polymorphism) via two libraries: FC++ and LC++. FC++ is a library for functional programming in C++; FC++ supports higher-order polymorphic functions, lazy lists, and a small lambda language; it also contains a large library of useful functions, datatypes, combinators, and monads. LC++ is a library for logic programming in C++; LC++ provides the same general functionality as Prolog, including the ability to return query results lazily (one at a time). Both libraries are embedded in C++ so that they share C++'s static type system, and the library interfaces provide straightforward ways for code from within one paradigm to ``call out' to another. Our work describes the techniques used to implement these libraries in C++ and shows that the resulting multiparadigm language has useful applications in real-world domains. We also describe how many of the implementation techniques can be generalized from C++ and applied to other programming languages to yield similar results.