Automatically structuring and translating CLIPS

Expert systems become more valuable when they can be integrated into production environments. Code that is written for easy maintainability and that can be ported to different machines can be easily integrated. This paper discusses two ports of CLIPS, implemented using the Metapack translation system developed by Abacus Programming Corporation. One translation converts positional form CLIPS into 'structured' or 'template' CLIPS, a form that is more easily maintained. The other translation converts either form of CLIPS into OPS83, a semantically similar forward-chaining language that has somewhat higher performance resulting from its being compiled.