Prolog Programming A First Course

Paul Brna

Abstract:

At the end of the course, the students should have enough familiarity with Prolog to be able to pursue any undergraduate course which makes use of Prolog.

This is a rather ambitious undertaking for a course of only twelve lectures so the lectures are supplemented with exercises and small practical projects wherever possible.

The Prolog implementation used is SICStus Prolog which is closely modelled on Quintus Prolog (SICS is the Swedish Institute of Computer Science). The reference manual should also be available for consultation [ SICStus, 1988 ]. © Paul Brna 1988

• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
  • A Warning
  • The Intended Audience
  • The Objective
  • The Aims
  • Course Structure
  • Acknowledgements
• Introduction
  • Declarative vs Procedural Programming
  • What Kind of Logic?
  • A Warning
  • A Request
• Knowledge Representation
  • Propositional Calculus
    • A Problem
  • First Order Predicate Calculus
  • We Turn to Prolog
  • Prolog Constants
  • Goals and Clauses
  • Multiple Clauses
  • Rules
  • Semantics
  • The Logical Variable
  • Rules and Conjunctions
  • Rules and Disjunctions
  • Both Disjunctions and Conjunctions
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Prolog's Search Strategy
  • Queries and Disjunctions
  • A Simple Conjunction
  • Conjunctions and Disjunctions
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Unification, Recursion and Lists
  • Unification
  • Recursion
  • Lists
    • How to construct/deconstruct a list
      • List Destruction:
      • List Construction:
      • Bigger Chunks:
    • The Empty List
    • Some Possible Matches
    • A Recursive Program Using Lists
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• The Box Model of Execution
  • The Box Model
  • The Flow of Control
  • An Example using the Byrd Box Model
  • An Example using an AND/OR Proof Tree
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Interlude: Practical Matters
  • Exiting and Leaving Prolog
  • Loading Files
  • Interactive Program Development
    • A Problem with consult/1
    • Two Variations on Program Development
    • Avoiding Various Kinds of Trouble
  • Input/Output Facilities
  • The Debugging Issue
  • The Tracer Outlined
    • Activating the Tracer
    • Interacting with the Tracer
  • Debugging
• Programming Techniques and List Processing
  • The `Reversibility' of Prolog Programs
    • Evaluation in Prolog
  • Calling Patterns
  • List Processing
    • Program Patterns
      • Test for Existence
      • Test All Elements
      • Return a Result ---Having Processed One Element
      • Return a Result ---Having Processed All Elements
    • Reconstructing Lists
      • Building Structure in the Clause Head
      • Building Structure in the Clause Body
  • Proof Trees
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Control and Negation
  • Some Useful Predicates for Control
    • true/0
    • fail/0
    • repeat/0
    • call/1
  • The Problem of Negation
    • /1
    • Negation as Failure
    • Using Negation in Case Selection
  • Some General Program Schemata
    • Generate --- Test
    • Finite and Infinite Generators
    • Test --- Process
    • Failure-Driven Loop
    • Some Practical Problems
      • Commit
      • Satisfy Once Only
      • Fail Goal Now
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Parsing in Prolog
  • Simple English Syntax
  • The Parse Tree
  • First Attempt at Parsing
  • A Second Approach
  • Prolog Grammar Rules
  • To Use the Grammar Rules
  • How to Extract a Parse Tree
  • Adding Arbitrary Prolog Goals
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Modifying the Search Space
  • A Special Control Predicate
    • Commit
    • Make Determinate
    • Fail Goal Now
  • Changing the Program
    • Do Not Do It!
    • Sometimes You have To!
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Prolog Syntax
  • Constants
  • Variables
  • Compound Terms
  • (Compound) Terms as Trees
  • Compound Terms and Unification
  • The Occurs Check
  • Lists Are Terms Too
  • How To Glue Two Lists Together
  • Rules as Terms
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Another Interlude: Input/Output
  • Testing a Predicate
  • Input/ Output Channels
  • Input/ Output and Files
  • The End of File Marker
  • Input of Prolog Terms
  • Defining Your Own Consult
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Operators
  • The Three Forms
    • Infix
    • Prefix
    • Postfix
  • Precedence
  • Associativity Notation
    • Infix Operators
    • The Prefix Case
    • Prefix Operators
    • Postfix Operators
  • How to Find Operator Definitions
  • How to Change Operator Definitions
  • A More Complex Example
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Advanced Features
  • Powerful Features
    • Powerful Features ---Typing
    • Powerful Features ---Splitting Up Clauses
      • clause/2
      • functor/3
      • arg/3
      • =../2
    • Powerful Features ---Comparisons of Terms
      • ==/2
      • ==/2
      • @>/2, @>=/2, @</2 and @=</2
    • Powerful Features ---Finding All Solutions
      • setof/3
      • Stage 1
      • Stage 2
      • Stage 3
      • bagof/3
    • Powerful Features ---Find Out about Known Terms
      • current_atom/1
      • current_functor/2
      • current_predicate/2
      • current_op/3
  • Open Lists and Difference Lists
  • Prolog Layout
    • Comments
      • Program Headers
      • Section Comments
      • End of Line Comments
      • Code Layout
  • Prolog Style
    • Side Effect Programming
      • Modifying the Program at Runtime
      • The cut (!/0)
      • ;/2
      • if ... then & if ... then ... else
  • Prolog and Logic Programming
    • Prolog and Resolution
    • Prolog and Parallelism
    • Prolog and Execution Strategies
    • Prolog and Functional Programming
    • Other Logic Programming Languages
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• A Short Prolog Bibliography
• References
• Details of the SICStus Prolog Tracer
• Solutions and Comments on Exercises for Chapter 2 on Knowledge Representation
  • Exercise Chapter 2.1
  • Execise Chapter 2.2
  • Exercise Chapter 2.3
  • Exercise Chapter 2.4
  • Exercise Chapter 2.5
  • Exercise Chapter 2.6
  • Exercise Chapter 2.7
• Solutions and Comments on Exercises for Chapter 3 on Search
  • Exercise Chapter 3.1
  • Exercise Chapter 3.2
• Solutions and Comments on Exercises for Chapter 4 on Unification and Recursion
  • Exercise Chapter 4.1 on Unification
  • Exercise Chapter 4.2 on Unification
  • Exercise 4.3 on Recursion
• Solutions and Comments on Exercises for Chapter 6 on Techniques
  • Exercise Chapter 6.1
• Solutions and Comments on Exercises for Chapter 8 on Parsing
  • Exercise #chap8dcg1#6389>
• Solutions and Comments on Exercises for Chapter9 on Extralogical Features
  • Exercise Chapter 9
• Solutions and Comments on Exercises for Chapter 11 on Operators
  • Exercise Chapter 11.1
• Solutions and Comments on Exercises for Chapter #advanced#6594>
  • Exercise #difflist1#6595>