Herbert Schildt

The Prolog name is derived from "Programming in Logic." Prolog was the original logic programming language. It is a general purpose language often associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. Prolog remains among the most popular such programming languages today, with many free and commercial implementations available.

Having its roots in formal logic, Prolog is a declarative programming language, unlike its procedural programming cousins, such as, C, Pascal, and BASIC. Prolog program logic is expressed in terms of relations. Execution is triggered by running queries over these relations. Relations and queries are constructed using Prolog's single data type, the term. Relations are defined by clauses.

This book, Advanced Turbo Prolog, was written to provide an overview of the entire field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including: expert systems, problem solving, logic and uncertainty, natural-language processing, robotics, machine learning, and vision and pattern recognition.

This book does not have to be read from cover-to-cover. Each chapter stands alone by focusing on a particular area of interest and showing how Turbo Prolog can serve that interest.

At the time this book was written, Turbo Prolog was marketed by Borland, but it is now developed and marketed by the Danish firm PDC (Prolog Development Center) that originally produced it.

While initially aimed at natural language processing, Prolog has since been extended into other areas, such as, theorem proving, expert systems, games, automated answering systems, ontologies, and sophisticated control systems. Modern Prolog capabilities support the creation of graphical user interfaces, as well as administrative and networked applications. Frameworks also exist which can provide a bridge between Prolog and the Java programming language.

I never encountered a programming problem that required the use of Prolog for solving it. I consider the language to be a curiosity, an oddity, a collector's item.… (more)