Continuations as a Generic Control-Flow Mechanism

In this paper we review the work done on the notion of continuations inside the framework of functional languages of the LISP-family, like Scheme. Continuations provide a basic tool that allows the implementation of a wide range of control-flow mechanisms that, on their turn, allow richer computation strategies. As those richer strategies are often suited to artificial intelligence techniques, specially those related with symbolic processing, continuations can be regarded as low level tools for the construction of AI environments. The Scheme operator call-with-current-continuation, that allows the capture of continuations, is described. Then some examples of their applications are given.