iProlog Programmer's Manual
Prolog was invented in the early seventies by Alain Colmerauer and is colleagues
at the University of Marseille. Prolog stands for Programmation en Logique
(Programming in Logic). Prolog differs from the most common programming
languages because it is a declarative language. This means that the programer
specifies a goal which is to be achieved and the Prolog interpreter/compiler
works out how to achieve it. Traditional programming languages are said
to be procedural. This means that the programmer must specify in detail
how to solve a problem. In purely declarative languages, the programmer
only states what the problem is and leaves the rest to the language itself.
Some applications of Prolog are: intelligent data base retrieval, natural
language understanding, expert systems, specification language, machine
learning, robot planning, graphics and problem solving .
The iProlog version of Prolog includes a number of extensions
intended to make it a powerful environment for data mining as well as logic
programming. These extensions include a library of machine learning tools,
ripple down rules, a frame language and functional notation.
Introduction to Prolog Programming
Reference Manual
-
Syntax
-
Directives
-
Built-in Predicates
Extensions
Warning! The extensions described in the pages below are
not part of standard Prolog. They are unique to iProlog.