Non-failure Analysis: Assessment

• A preliminary assessment showed that the non-failure analysis that we have developed is very accurate (D.WP2.3.2.M3.1).

• We have also compared our non-failure analysis with an existing analysis: ``Cardinality Analysis of Prolog'', C. Braem et al. (ILPS'94).

• According to this comparison our analysis is more powerful regarding non-failure detection.
• It follows from the experimental results presented in the former paper, that the cardinality analysis seems to be more powerful for detecting determinacy than non-failure, and hence, is more appropriate for the former.

• Although in the paper it is pointed out in that the sure success information can be improved by using a more sophisticated type domain, this is also applicable to our analysis.
• Moreover, much of the power of our algorithm comes from the use of the notion of "covering", which allows to detect when at least one of the clauses (not necessarily the same) defining a predicate will not fail for all possible calls.