PROLOG

The Declarative Programming

Language

Hemant Kamat
Hemant.Kamat@shalaka.com

Agenda

Overview
Declarative Programming
Predicate Calculus
PROLOG Program Structure
Visual PROLOG Program Structure

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Overview
PROgramming in LOGic
4G Programming language
Logic Programming language
Uses variation of predicate logic

Declarative vs Procedural Language

"What to do" vs "How to do"

Facts and Rules base

Inference Engine
Process for reasoning logically
Pattern matcher
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Declarative Programming
Facts What is known
Rules What you can infer [from given facts]
Facts and Rules Stored in Knowledgebase

Queries use the rules and facts to infer

new "knowledge"
If a query succeeds in inferring new
knowledge, flow proceeds to next query
If a query fails in inferring new knowledge,
it backtracks to apply another rule
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Predicate Calculus
Predicates are symbolic names of Relations
Variables are General Clauses
Anonymous Variables represented by lone
underscore "_"
Used to ignore unwanted output values
Goals are Queries
Simple
Compound
Conjunctions
Both Subgoals have to be true. Subgoals separated by
","

Disjunctions
Either Subgoal has to be true. Subgoals separated by ";"
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PROLOG Program Structure

Constants
begin with lower case letters or enclosed in
single quotes

Variables
begin with Uppercase letter

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PROLOG Program Structure

Clauses
Two types of phrases
Facts and Rules
Facts are relations or properties that the
Domain Expert knows to be true
Rules are dependent relations; they allow Prolog
to infer one piece of information from another

Facts are of the form

property(object1, object2, object3, objectN)
relation(object1, object2, object3, objectN)
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PROLOG Program Structure

Clauses
Rules are of the form
Head:-Body
relation(object,object,...,object):relation(object,...,object),
.
.
relation(object,...,object).

Objects, Properties and Relations names

start with lowercase alphabet followed by any
combination of alphabets (lowercase or
uppercase), digits and underscore characters
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Visual PROLOG Program Structure

Sections
Clauses
Facts and Rules placed in this section

Predicates
User-defined predicates in the clauses section declared
in this section

Domains
User defined names to data types to make them
distinctive

Goal
Automatically executed when the PROLOG program runs
Same as the body of a rule
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Visual PROLOG Program Structure

Sections
Facts
Dynamic Facts placed in this section

Constants
User-defined symbolic constants declared in this section

Global
Declare global domains, global facts, global predicates

Compiler Directives
include "file"
Same as the body of a rule
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Visual PROLOG Program Structure

Domains
Integral Standard Domains

short
ushort
long
ulong
integer
unsigned
byte
word
dword

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Visual PROLOG Program Structure

Domains
Basic Standard Domains

char
real
string
symbol

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Visual PROLOG Program Structure

Data Objects
Simple Data Objects
Characters are char type
Numbers are of integer or real type
Atoms are of symbol or string type

Compound Data Objects

Functors
Holds its arguments together and does not
represent a computation to be performed
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Visual PROLOG Program Structure

Predicate Arity
Number of arguments a predicate takes
Multiple Arity
Two predicates with the same name can
have different arity
Predicates with same name but different
arity grouped together in the Predicates
and Clauses sections
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Unification and Backtracking

Unification
Process of matching a goal with a clause
If matching is successful then free variables
are bound to values so that the goal and the
clause are identical

Backtracking
Process of choosing an alternate path in
logical reasoning if one path fails

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Unification and Backtracking

Controlling the Search
fail predicate
Forces failure and hence backtracking

Cut (!) predicate

Prevents backtracking

not predicate
Succeeds when the subgoal cannot be proven
true

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Backtracking
Fail predicate
DOMAINS
name = symbol
PREDICATES
father(name, name)
everybody
CLAUSES
father(leonard,katherine).
father(carl,jason).
father(carl,marilyn).
everybody:father(X,Y),
write(X," is ",Y,"'s father\n"),
fail.
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Backtracking
Fail predicate
GOAL
father(X,Y).

Results
X=leonard, Y=katherine
1 Solutions

-------------------------------GOAL
everybody.

Results
leonard is katherine's father
carl is jason's father
carl is marilyn's father
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Backtracking
Cut predicate
PREDICATES
friend(symbol,symbol)
girl(symbol)
likes(symbol,symbol)
CLAUSES
friend(bill,jane):girl(jane),
likes(bill,jane),!.
friend(bill,jim):likes(jim,baseball),!.
friend(bill,sue):girl(sue).
girl(mary).
girl(jane).
girl(sue).
likes(jim,baseball).
likes(bill,sue).
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Backtracking
Cut predicate
goal
friend(bill, Who).
Without Cut in friends clause:
Who=Jim
Who=Sue
2 Solutions
With Cut in friends clause:
Who=Jim
1 Solutions

Cut predicate makes clauses deterministic

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PROLOG Lists
List is an Object that contains an
arbitrary number of other objects within it
e.g: [1,2,3,4,5]
Declaring a List
DOMAINS
integerlist=integer*

Head is the first element in the List

Tail is the remaining part of the List
excluding the Head
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PROLOG Lists
Using a List
DOMAINS
list = integer*
PREDICATES
write_a_list(list)
CLAUSES
write_a_list([]).
write_a_list([H|T]):write(H),nl,
write_a_list(T).
GOAL
write_a_list([1, 2, 3]).
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PROLOG Comments
/* This is a Comment */

/* This is also a comment but

spread over more than one line */

% Another example of a comment

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PROLOG Internal Database

Internal database is a collection of facts to which more
facts of the same type can be added to or removed from
Declaring Facts Database
Facts Section

Predicates declared in facts section are used like other

predicates in the clauses section and these predicates
can be inserted or removedfrom the facts database at
runtime
Predicates declared in facts section can be added as
facts and not as rules
Facts in fact database cannot have free variables
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PROLOG Internal Database

Updating facts Database
Adding facts at runtime

asserta
Assert a fact into the fact database before
all existing facts

assertz
Assert a fact into the fact database after all
existing facts

assert
Behaves same as assertz
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PROLOG Internal Database

Updating facts Database
Removing facts at runtime

retract
Removes the first fact in the facts database
that matches the fact argument

retractall
Removes the all facts in the facts database
that match the fact argument

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PROLOG Internal Database

Updating facts Database
Loading facts from a file at runtime

consult
Reads in a file and appends all facts in the
facts section to the end of the internal
database
Saving facts to a file at runtime

save
Saves facts to a file
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Arithmetic and Comparison

in PROLOG
Arithmetic operations
Arithmetic functions and predicates
Relational Operations
Comparison Characters, Strings and
Symbols

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Writing, Reading in PROLOG

write(Param1,Param2,Param3,ParamN)
nl inserts a newline
writef(FormatString,Param1,Param2,ParamN)
FormatString= %-m.pf

readint(X)
readreal(X)
readchar(X)
readln(Line)
readterm(DomainName,Term)
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Files in PROLOG
file_str(FileName, Text)
Reads and Writes from and to a file
Reads from file if the Text variable is a free variable

Binary block transfer

readblock(Length,Bterm)
writeblock(Length,Bterm)
file_bin(FileName,BinTerm)
openread(SymbolicFileName, OSFileName)
openwrite(SymbolicFileName, OSFileName)
openappend(SymbolicFileName, OSFileName)
openmodify(SymbolicFileName, OSFileName)

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Files in PROLOG
filemode(SymbolicFileName, FileMode)
If FileMode=0, then SymbolicFileName is set to binary
filemode else
set to text filemode

closefile(SymbolicFileName)
readdevice(SymbolicFileName)
writedevice(SymbolicFileName)
filepos(SymbolicFileName, FilePosition, Mode)
eof(SymbolicFileName)
flush(SymbolicFileName)
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Files in PROLOG

existfile(OSFileName)
searchfile(PathList,Name,FoundName)
deletefile(OSFileName)
renamefile(OldOSFileName, NewOSFileName)
disk(Path)
copyfile(SourceName,DestinationName)
filenamepath(QualName,Path,Name)
filenameext(Name,Name,Ext)
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String Processing in PROLOG

frontchar(String1,Char,String2)
fronttoken(String1, Token, Rest)
frontstr(NumberOfChars, String1, StartStr, EndStr)
frontstr(NumberOfChars, String1, StartStr, EndStr)
str_len(StringArg, Length)
isname(String)
format(OutputString,FormatString,Arg1,Arg2,Arg3,..
.,ArgN)

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String Processing in PROLOG

subchar(String,Position,Char)
substring(Str_in,Pos,Len,Str_out)
searchchar(String,Char,Position)
searchstring(SourceStr,SearchStr,Pos)

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Type Conversion in PROLOG

char_int(Char, Integer)
str_char(String, Char)
str_int(String, Integer)
str_real(String, Real)
upper_lower(Upper, Lower)

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Interfacing PROLOG with other

Languages
Mixed Language development
Make best of both worlds!!
Using DLL's

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PROLOG

End of Session II

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