We have added new material to Chapter 3 to give an account of up-to-date programming techniques using accumulators and difference structures. Chapter 8 contains some new information on syntax errors. Operator precedences are now compatible with the most widely-used implementations. We have made further reorganisations and improvements in presentation, and have corrected a number of minor errors. We thank the many people who brought typographical errors in the previous edition to our attention, and we thank A.R.C. for careful proofreading. Cambridge, England W.F.C. January,1987 C.S.M. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1984) Since the first publishing of Programming in Prolog in 1981, Prolog has continued to attract an unexpectedly great deal of interest in the computer science community and is now seen as a potential basis for an important new generation of programming languages and systems. We hope that Programming in Prolog has partially satisfied the increasing need for an easy, yet comprehensive introduction to the language as a tool for practical programming. In this second edition we have taken the opportunity to improve the presentation and to correct various minor errors in the original. We thank the many people who have given us suggestions for corrections and improvement. Cambridge, England W.F.C.

The computer programming language Prolog is quickly gaining popularity throughout the world. Since Its beginnings around 1970. Prolog has been chosen by many programmers for applications of symbolic computation. including: D relational databases D mathematical logic D abstract problem solving D understanding natural language D architectural design D symbolic equation solving D biochemical structure analysis D many areas of artificial Intelligence Until now. there has been no textbook with the aim of teaching Prolog as a practical programming language. It Is perhaps a tribute to Prolog that so many people have been motivated to learn It by referring to the necessarily concise reference manuals. a few published papers. and by the orally transmitted 'folklore' of the modern computing community. However. as Prolog is beginning to be Introduced to large numbers of undergraduate and postgraduate students. many of our colleagues have expressed a great need for a tutorial guide to learning Prolog. We hope this little book will go some way towards meeting this need. Many newcomers to Prolog find that the task of writing a Prolog program Is not like specifying an algorithm in the same way as In a conventional programming language. Instead. the Prolog programmer asks more what formal relationships and objects occur In his problem.

This book covers all that is needed by students on a one-year introductory Prolog course at first or second year degree level. It introduces Prolog to students as simply and painlessly as possible. Where Artificial Intelligence (AI) topics are introduced, they are easier ones and are treated simply. This book is Prolog for Students, with examples from AI, not a book on AI using Prolog. The text assumes access to a suitable, good, Prolog interpreter, such as LPA Prolog. It also assumes that students with an aptitude for research will follow it up with more advanced study, perhaps a third or fourth year option, and further reading suggestions are included. The book is organised with the basics of the subject introduced first, and covered gradually, so they can be fully understood before moving on to harder topics. The topics that students find more difficult, such as recursion and lists, are not covered until about half way through the book. There are many in-text questions, student self-testing questions and programming practice exercises throughout the book. If used to accompany a taught course, the material of one chapter can be covered in each week. This book covers all that is needed by students on a one-year introductory Prolog course at first or second year degree level. It introduces Prolog to students as simply and painlessly as possible. Where Artificial Intelligence (AI) topics are introduced, they are easier ones and are treated simply. This book is Prolog for Students, with examples from AI, not a book on AI using Prolog. The text assumes access to a suitable, good, Prolog interpreter, such as LPA Prolog. It also assumes that students with an aptitude for research will follow it up with more advanced study, perhaps a third or fourth year option, and further reading suggestions are included. The book is organised with the basics of the subject introduced first, and covered gradually, so they can be fully understood before moving on to harder topics. The topics that students find more difficult, such as recursion and lists, are not covered until about half way through the book. There are many in-text questions, student self-testing questions and programming practice exercises throughout the book. If used to accompany a taught course, the material of one chapter can be covered in each week.

The fourth edition of this best-selling guide to Prolog and Artificial Intelligence has been updated to include key developments in the field while retaining its lucid approach to these topics. New and extended topics include Constraint Logic Programming, abductive reasoning and partial order planning. Divided into two parts, the first part of the book introduces the programming language Prolog, while the second part teaches Artificial Intelligence using Prolog as a tool for the implementation of AI techniques. This textbook is meant to teach Prolog as a practical programming tool and so it concentrates on the art of using the basic mechanisms of Prolog to solve interesting problems. The fourth edition has been fully revised and extended to provide an even greater range of applications, making it a self-contained guide to Prolog, AI or AI Programming for students and professional programmers.

Appropriate for courses in artificial intelligence, computer science, logic programming, and expert systems. Can be used as supplemental text in courses in computational linguistics (natural language processing). This text covers the Prolog programming language thoroughly with an emphasis on building practical application software, not just theory. Working through this book, students build several types of expert systems, as well as natural language processing software and utilities to read foreign file formats. This is the first book to cover ISO Standard Prolog, but the programs are compatible with earlier dialects of the language. Program files are available by FTP from The University of Georgia.

Addressed to readers at different levels of programming expertise, The Practice ofProlog offers a departure from current books that focus on small programming examples requiringadditional instruction in order to extend them to full programming projects. It shows how to designand organize moderate to large Prolog programs, providing a collection of eight programmingprojects, each with a particular application, and illustrating how a Prolog program was written tosolve the application. These range from a simple learning program to designing a database formolecular biology to natural language generation from plans and stream data analysis.Leon Sterlingis Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Science at Case Western ReserveUniversity. He is the coauthor, along with Ehud Shapiro, of The Art of Prolog.Contents: A SimpleLearning Program, Richard O'Keefe. Designing a Prolog Database for Molecular Biology, Ewing Lusk,Robert Olson, Ross Overbeek, Steve Tuecke. Parallelizing a Pascal Compiler, Eran Gabber. PREDITOR: AProlog-Based VLSI Editor, Peter B. Reintjes. Assisting Register Transfer Level Hardware Design, PaulDrongowski. Design and Implementation of aPartial Evaluation System, Arun Lakhotia, Leon Sterling.Natural Language Generation from Plans, Chris Mellish. Stream Data Analysis in Prolog, Stott Parker.

Written for those who wish to learn Prolog as a powerful software development tool, but do not necessarily have any background in logic or AI. Includes a full glossary of the technical terms and self-assessment exercises.