Design rationale for TELOS, a PASCAL-based AI language

Abstract

TELOS is a PASCAL-based AI language intended to facilitate efficient development of efficient, well-structured programs. The design emphasizes powerful data abstraction and control abstraction mechanisms rather than the provision of particular high-level constructs. Among the many capabilities of TELOS are those intended to make it especially suitable for systematic AI model building, for example, in the areas of knowledge representation, planning, and reasoning. An event facility is provided which unifies the handling of conditional interrupts (demons), process suspension, process communication and execution faults. The context-dependent TELOS data base is referenceable either associatively or directly.