Prolog
Computer Engineering Dep’t
2008/ 2015
HIGHLIGHT ON PROLOG
• Invented early seventies by Alain Colmerauer in
France and Robert Kowalski in Britain
• Prolog = Programmation en Logique
(Programming in Logic).
• Prolog is a declarative programming language
unlike most common programming languages. In
a declarative language the programmer specifies
a goal to be achieved and the Prolog system
works out how to achieve it
• Relational databases owe something to Prolog
• Procedural programmer must specify in detail
how to solve a problem:
mix ingredients;
beat until smooth;
bake for 20 minutes in a moderate oven;
remove tin from oven;
put on bench;
close oven;
turn off oven;
• In purely declarative languages, the
programmer only states what the problem is
and leaves the rest to the language system.
APPLICATIONS OF PROLOG
Some applications of Prolog are:
• intelligent data base retrieval
• natural language understanding
• expert systems
• specification language
• machine learning
• robot planning
• automated reasoning
• problem solving
RELATIONS
• Prolog programs specify relationships among objects and
properties of objects.
• When we say, "John owns the book", we are declaring the
ownership relationship between two objects: John and the
book.
• When we ask, "Does John own the book?" we are trying to
find out about a relationship.
• Relationships can also rules such as:
Two people are sisters, if they are both female and
they have the same parents.
• A rule allows us to find out about a relationship even if the
relationship isn't explicitly stated as a fact.
Continued…
• As usual in programming, you need to be a bit
careful how you phrase things:
• The following would be better:
A and B are sisters
if A and B are both female and
they have the same father and
they have the same mother and
A is not the same as B
Programming in Prolog
Declare facts describing explicit relationships between
objects and properties objects might have
• Example: Mary likes pizza, grass has_colour green, Mr.
chu taught Paul Japanese
Define rules defining implicit relationships between objects
• Example: The sister rule above and/or rules defining
implicit object properties such as X is a parent if there is a
Y such that Y is a child of X.
Then uses the system by:
Asking questions above relationships between objects,
and/or about object properties
• Example: Does Mary like pizza? is Joe a parent?
FACTS
• What is already known.
• Axiom about some object and their relationship.
Example: bonny is fat. // what is fat? = fat(bonny).
• Properties of objects, or relationships between objects
• "Dr Turing lectures in course 9020", is written in Prolog as: lectures(turing,
9020).
• Notice that:
– names of properties/relationships begin with lower case letters.
– the relationship name appears as the first term
– objects appear as comma-separated arguments within parentheses.
– A period "." must end a fact.
– objects also begin with lower case letters. They also can begin with digits (like
9020), and can be strings of characters enclosed in quotes (as in reads(fred, "War
and Peace")).
• lectures(turing, 9020). is also called a predicate
Facts about a hypothetical computer
science department:
• % lectures(X, Y): person X lectures in course Y
lectures(turing, 9020).
lectures(codd, 9311).
lectures(backus, 9021).
lectures(ritchie, 9201).
lectures(minsky, 9414).
lectures(codd, 9314).
Together, these facts form Prolog's database.
QUERIES
• Once we have a database of facts and rules, we can ask questions about
the stored information.
• Suppose we want to know if Turing lectures in course 9020. We can ask:
Notice that:
• In SWI Prolog, queries are terminated by a full stop.
• To answer this query, Prolog consults its database to see if this is a
known fact.
• In example dialogues with Prolog, the text in green italics is what the
user types.
Another example query
?- lectures(codd, 9020).
false.
• if answer is true., the query succeeded
• if answer is false., the query failed.
Note: Many early versions of Prolog, including early versions of SWI-
Prolog, say No instead of false. In the latest version of SWI Prolog, it
no longer says "No." but says "false." instead.
• The use of lower case for cod is critical.
• Prolog is not being intelligent about this - it would not see a
difference between this query and
lectures(fred, 9020). or lectures(xyzzy, 9020).
though a person inspecting the database can see that fred is a
student, not a lecturer, and that xyzzy is neither student nor
lecturer.
Variables
• Suppose we want to ask, "What course does Turing teach"?
• This could be written as: Is there a course, X, that Turing teaches?
• The variable X stands for an object that the questioner does not
know about yet.
• To answer the question, Prolog has to find out the value of X, if it
exists.
• As long as we do not know the value of a variable it is said to be
unbound.
• When a value is found, the variable is said to bound to that value.
• The name of a variable must begin with a capital letter or an
underscore character, "_".
Variables 2
• To ask Prolog to find the course that Turing teaches, enter this:
?- lectures(turing, Course).
Course = 9020 ← output from Prolog
• To ask which course(s) Prof. Cod teaches, we may ask,
?- lectures(codd , Course).
Course = 9311 ; ← type ";" to get next solution
Course = 9314
?-
• If Prolog can tell that there are no more solutions, it just gives you
the ?- prompt for a new query, as here. If Prolog can't tell, it will let
you type ; again, and then if there is no further solution, report false.
• Prolog can find all possible ways to answer a query, unless you
explicitly tell it not to.
Practice
• On text editor, write the following fact.
female(hanan).
female(aster).
female(ruth).
male(tom).
male(abdu).
male(zola).
mother(hanan,abdu).
mother(hanan,zola).
mother(hanan,aster).
mother(tsehay,ruth).
father(john,ruth).
father(tom,abdu).
father(tom,zola).
father(tom,aster).
parent(zola,tom,hanan).
Save it as anything.pl
Continued…
• Open SWI-Prolog -> File -> Edit [choose the .pl file] ->
Compile[Editor] -> Make [make done] -> On SWI-Prolog, File ->
Edit -> Consult.
• Query
1 ?- parents (zola,F,M).
F=tom,
M=hanan.
2 ?- father (tom,zola).
true
3 ?- father (abc,zola).
F=tom.
Rules
• Extend the fact about some object and their
relationship.
Example:
likes(john,suzie). :- If
likes(suzie,john).
likes(bob,ket). , And
dating(X,Y):-
likes(X,Y),
; Or
likes(X,Y).
Not not
friendship(X,Y).
likes(X,Y);
likes(Y,X).
