Logic-based genetic programming with definite clause translation grammars

Abstract

DCTG-GP is a genetic programming system that uses definite clause translation grammars. A DCTG is a logical version of an attribute grammar that supports the definition of context-free languages, and it allows semantic information associated with a language to be easily accomodated by the grammar. This is useful in genetic programming for defining the interpreter of a target language, or incorporating both syntactic and semantic problem-specific contraints into the evolutionary search. The DCTG-GP system improves on other grammar-based GP systems by permitting non-trivial semantic aspects of the language to be defined with the grammar. It also automatically analyzes grammar rules in order to determine their minimal depth and termination characteristics, which are required when generating random program trees of varied shapes and sizes. An application using DCTG-GP is described. * 1

Grammar-based Genetic Programming: a survey

“…Ross [83] further extended this work, replacing DCGs with Definite Clause Translation Grammars, in which the semantics of the grammar are defined in a parallel structure to the syntax. This offers a key advantage in re-usability: the bulk of the problem semantics is written as annotations to the grammar, so the separate code to implement a fitness function is typically small -often less than ten lines of prolog.…”

“…A number of GGGP systems -Ross' DCTG-based system [83] and attributegrammar systems [38,110] -incorporate semantics along with the syntax of the grammar. As a result, these systems are highly retargetable.…”

An improved representation for evolving programs

“…Other work on linear and grammar-based representations for Genetic Programming has been done by Freeman [9] and Ross [36].…”

Search for Minimal and Semi-Minimal Rule Sets in Incremental Learning of Context-Free and Definite Clause Grammars

“…Fredouille et al [4] described a method for efficient ILP-based learning on DCGs for biological pattern recognition. Ross [16] presented learning of Definite Clause Translation Grammars, a logical version of attribute grammars, by genetic programming.…”