Building a backtracking facility in smalltalk without kernel support

Authors:
Wilf R. LaLonde;Mark Van Gulik
Affiliations:
School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6;School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6
Venue:
OOPSLA '88 Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications
Year:
1988

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Abstract

Languages like Snobol, Prolog, and Icon were designed with backtracking facilities from the outset and these facilities are deeply intertwined with the implementation. Retrofitting a backtracking facility in a language that wasn't designed for it has never been achieved. We report on an experiment to retrofit Smalltalk with a backtracking facility. The facility is provided through a small number of primitives written in the language (no modifications to the kernel were made). The ability to do this is a direct result of the power provided by the objectification of contexts.