Prolog Concepts

A declarative language Most programming languages are imperative—you tell the computer what to do to solve a problem Prolog is declarative—you give it the data it needs, and it solves the problem for you Consider: append([], List, List). append([Head | Tail], List, [Head | More]) :- append(Tail, List, More). This defines what it means append lists You can use it to append two lists You can use it to find what to append to a list to get another list You can use it to find what list to append to to get another list You can test whether the relation holds between three lists

A constraint satisfaction language Prolog is also one of a number of constraint satisfaction languages You tell it the constraints on a problem (e.g. the solution must be someone who is both female and rich), and it finds a solution that satisfies those constraints A “logic puzzle” is nothing more than a set of constraints (e.g. every man has a different tie)

A homoiconic language Prolog is homoiconic—that is, there is no distinction between “statements” in the language and the “data” that the languages processes When you provide “input” to a Prolog program (e.g. for an adventure game), you use the same syntax as when you write the program We haven’t emphasized homoiconicity in Prolog, because it is more important in some of the other languages we will be studying

Prolog does backtracking You don’t have to implement backtracking in Prolog; the language does it for you The only other “language” I know of that does this is Regular Expressions, which are a “sublanguage” of most modern programming languages loves(chuck, X) female(X) rich(X) call fail exit redo

Prolog uses unification The basic rules of unification are: Any value can be unified with itself A variable can be unified with another variable A variable can be unified with any value Two different structures can be unified if their constituents can be unified Lists are a particularly important kind of structure A variable can be unified with a structure containing that same variable Unification is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive Parameter transmission is by unification, not assignment

Prolog is a theorem prover Prolog is an implementation of resolution theorem proving in a programming language Because it is based on logic, there is very little that is ad hoc or arbitrary about Prolog

Resolution Here is the resolution principle: A clause is a disjunction (“or”) of zero or more literals, some or all of which may be negated sinks(X)  dissolves(X, water)  ¬denser(X, water) Any expression in the predicate calculus can be put into clause form X  Y can be rewritten as X  Y Conjunctions (“ands”) can be rewritten as separate clauses The existential quantifier  can be replaced by a Skolem function If the existential quantifier is under control of a universal quantifier, replace it with a function of the universally quantified variable Otherwise, just replace with a constant (whose value need not be known) Universal quantifiers, , can be dropped Here is the resolution principle: From X  someLiterals and X  someOtherLiterals ---------------------------------------------- conclude: someLiterals  someOtherLiterals Clauses are closed under resolution

The End