Programming in Prolog: Using the ISO Standard [Paperback]

William F. Clocksin (Author), Christopher S. Mellish (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 3540583505 | ISBN-13: 978-3540583509 | Publication Date: January 17, 1997 | Edition: 4th

Since the first edition of this book in 1981, Prolog has continued to attract an unexpectedly great deal of interest in the computer science community and has turned out to be a basis for an important new family of programming languages and systems for Artificial Intelligence. In the preceding three editions, the authors have steadily added new material, improved the presentation, and corrected various minor errors to provide a textbook as well as a reference work for everyone who wants to study and use Prolog as a practical programming language. The authors concentrate on teaching "core" Prolog. All examples conform to this standard and will run on the most widely-used Prolog implementations some of which are listed in the appendices with indications as to how they diverge from the standard.

Editorial Reviews

Review

" A classic [that] should be in the collection and within easy reach of any serious Prolog programmer...[it] is, and probably always will be, the standard." -- ACM Computing Reviews

From the Back Cover

Originally published in 1981, this was the first textbook on programming in the Prolog language and is still the definitive introductory text on Prolog. Though many Prolog textbooks have been published since, this one has withstood the test of time because of its comprehensiveness, tutorial approach, and emphasis on general programming applications. Prolog has continued to attract a great deal of interest in the computer science community, and has turned out to be the basis for an important new generation of programming languages and systems for Artificial Intelligence. Since the previous edition of Programming in Prolog, the language has been standardised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and this book has been updated accordingly. The authors have also introduced some new material, clarified some explanations, corrected a number of minor errors, and removed appendices about Prolog systems that are now obsolete. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 4th edition (January 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3540583505
• ISBN-13: 978-3540583509
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,766,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Prolog

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dissatisfied, September 17, 2009

By 

John Smith - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Programming in Prolog: Using the ISO Standard (Paperback)

Pros:
- Even someone with no programming or math knowledge could pick up the book, read it, and learn Prolog
- Uses ISO-Prolog
- Large section of helpful example programs

Big Cons:
(I'll give citations, only from the first 100 pages to keep things short, lest anyone think I am lying about the problems with the book)
- Frequent syntax errors *in program statements* - in Prolog, every comma and period is absolutely essential, when they are missing it entirely changes the meaning of the statement - the book misses them pretty routinely (p 81, twice)
- Frequent logic errors - in Prolog, the order of facts and rules is extremely important. The book commonly mixes things up, presenting you with programs that will not work (p 56 - note here that they are trying to give an example of what will/won't work, and they get it backwards)
- Frequent editing/formatting errors - charts, diagrams etc are fairly often on the wrong page or in the wrong location, etc. (p 48)
- Poor organization - looking through the table of contents, you would think the book is extremely well organized, but as you read it, you'll find new and important ideas thrown into random sections - if you forget something, and need to find it later, you'll probably need to re-skim the entire book. Things are almost never presented in convenient bullets/numbering, almost always in paragraph form, again, making essential ideas tedious to find.
- Confusing - I have degrees in math and computer science, and have been programming for 15 years, and I still found parts of the book hard to follow - note that it had nothing to do with Prolog itself, which is actually very straightforward, but rather with the explanations given, which sometimes seem meandering and poorly worded.
- A really short and crummy index makes things hard to find. For example, look up "atoms", a concept first mentioned on page 26, and routinely mentioned afterwards, a concept absolutely essential to understanding Prolog - the index shows that the first (and only) time it appears is on page 123.

Average Cons:
- Authors use an "arrow system" to trace Prolog decision making, I think a table system (which could easily show previous, current, and future steps, and details of each iteration) would have been better while presenting more information in a clearer fashion.
- Code re-use - normally a good thing, frustrating in this book. You might have a rule (like a function) called "mother(X)..." early on in the book, not use it for 100 pages, and then it appears again. If you want to try the program out yourself, you'll need to know the exact definition of "mother(X)...". There's no way to find what page the function was on in the index or TOC, so you find yourself spending 30 minutes leafing through the book to find it. 99% of these are a single line of code, so there's really no need to reuse them, it's hardly saving any space.
- Overly complex examples - sometimes the authors illustrate an idea with 20 lines of code, when 4 would have been sufficient. It makes for a lot of extra reading and deciphering.

Small Cons:
- (This could be a pro or con - since I don't know too many people who *start* their programming experience with Prolog, I assume the reader has some experience with programming, and so list this as a con) Book is far too detailed for someone with moderate programming or math experience. This helps some people, but makes it a tedious read for others. Every concept is thoroughly explained. If you're a programmer, this gets a little old during things like variables and recursion. If you know any math, verbose explanations of predicate logic will become tiresome. In fairness, it was no doubt the authors' intention to make a "complete" introduction to Prolog, and so it is hard to criticize this.
- (Another pro/con, depending on the reader) British examples - the authors are British (or at least one of them is), and use British references in their code all the time (9th century princes of Wales, p 34; horses who won races in Britain in 1927, p 53) - if you're British this might break up the monotony and make things a little more interesting, if you're not, it just gets a little old, I'd rather see every example just use "cat","dog","mouse".

Other:
- NOT a good reference book (and it wasn't meant to be), if you know Prolog already and need a reference book, look elsewhere. This is for people who do not know Prolog.

Conclusion:
- I wish I bought a different book. BUT despite everything, I did adequately learn Prolog from this book, so will reluctantly give it 3 stars.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Concise presentation of Prolog, June 15, 2000

By 

Armen Jamkotchian (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming in Prolog: Using the ISO Standard (Paperback)

Prolog is a complex subject, especially for someone not well familiar with mathematical logic. Thus, it is very important how the foundation would be laid down. Typically the books I had read on Prolog tend to two extremes. They are either too condensed for such a complicated subject as logical programming, or too broad and mathematically intensive. I would put this book into the first category. Though very concise and well structured, this book does not seem to be a good primer. I would rather recommend the book of Ivan Bratko "Prolog Programming for Artificial Intelligence (International Computer Science Series)" 2nd edition (the third edition of this book is due in August 2000). Ivan Bratko had managed to find the optimal style of presenting both the essence and the practical aspects of the language. Bratko's book covers various practical applications of the language and manages to convey the basic concepts of Prolog without overwhelming the beginner with too abstract or too condensed passages.

Nevertheless, "Programming in Prolog" could be a very good programming reference once you are relatively comfortable with the language.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent resource on the Prolog programming language, March 14, 2001

By 

Andrew McCaffrey "The Grumpy Young Man" (Satellite of Love, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming in Prolog: Using the ISO Standard (Paperback)

This is an extreme valuable book on the Prolog programming language that every computer science person should own. Prolog itself is actually a fairly simple language to learn, albeit slightly obscure. It's reputation for complexity comes from its non-standard implementation, but if you don't enter into it expecting it to look and behave like other languages then you should be all right. Once you get past the mathematics and logic, you should be able to get your mind working in that particular direction. This book is a very handy guide for getting the programmer into the Prolog mindset as well as bringing one up to speed on all the (sometimes very confused) syntax.

This book, like Prolog itself, is not for the beginning programmer. If you have a good background in logic or mathematics, then you should find this book to be very rewarding.