Cripps, Andrew2024-08-132024-08-1319871987https://hdl.handle.net/1828/17556Trying to represent knowledge in computers has long been an established field of research in artificial intelligence. The problem of inheritance is located within the field of knowledge representation. This thesis provides a general survey of the problem, exploring its history and development, for the first time. The first part describes the evolution of the prob­lem and offers an account of knowledge-based systems which have made use of inheritance. The second part of this thesis shows that these systems are shown to have several shortcom­ings, and by identifying them, the problem of inheritance is carefully specified. The last part of the thesis provides and efficient solution to a sub-problem of the inheritance problem, called the problem of exceptions.97 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis