In computer science, the well-founded semantics is a three-valued semantics for logic programming, which gives a precise meaning to general logic programs.
History
The well-founded semantics was defined by Van Gelder, et al. in 1988. The Prolog system XSB implements the well-founded semantics since 1997. ==Three-valued logic==
Three-valued logic
The well-founded semantics assigns a unique model to every general logic program. However, instead of only assigning propositions true or false, it adds a third value unknown for representing ignorance. ==Complexity ==
Complexity
In 1989, Van Gelder suggested an algorithm to compute the well-founded semantics of a propositional logic program whose time complexity is quadratic in the size of the program. , no general subquadratic algorithm for the problem was known. ==References==