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The Art of Prolog (1994)

2020-06-209:4513952mitpress.mit.edu

This new edition of The Art of Prolog contains a number of important changes. Most background sections at the end of each chapter have been updated to take account of important recent research…

From Logic Programming

This new edition of The Art of Prolog contains a number of important changes. Most background sections at the end of each chapter have been updated to take account of important recent research results, the references have been greatly expanded, and more advanced exercises have been added which have been used successfully in teaching the course.

Part II, The Prolog Language, has been modified to be compatible with the new Prolog standard, and the chapter on program development has been significantly altered: the predicates defined have been moved to more appropriate chapters, the section on efficiency has been moved to the considerably expanded chapter on cuts and negation, and a new section has been added on stepwise enhancement—a systematic way of constructing Prolog programs developed by Leon Sterling. All but one of the chapters in Part III, Advanced Prolog Programming Techniques, have been substantially changed, with some major rearrangements. A new chapter on interpreters describes a rule language and interpreter for expert systems, which better illustrates how Prolog should be used to construct expert systems. The chapter on program transformation is completely new and the chapter on logic grammars adds new material for recognizing simple languages, showing how grammars apply to more computer science examples.

Downloadable instructor resources available for this title: solution manual

Out of Print ISBN: 9780262193382 552 pp. | 8 in x 9 in
$85.00 X ISBN: 9780262691635 552 pp. | 8 in x 9 in
Leon S. Sterling is Director of eResearch and Chair of Software Innovation and Engineering at the University of Melbourne. He is the coauthor of The Art of Prolog (second edition, MIT Press, 1994) and the editor of The Practice of Prolog (MIT Press, 1990). Ehud Y. Shapiro is Senior Scientist, Department of Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science.
Out of Print ISBN: 9780262193382 552 pp. | 8 in x 9 in
$85.00 X ISBN: 9780262691635 552 pp. | 8 in x 9 in


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Comments

  • By nextos 2020-06-2118:534 reply

    It should be noted that under the open access tab one can download the book.

    Aside from being one of my favorite programming books ever, and on par with SICP and PAIP I think, the font they used is really beautiful [1]. The PDF perhaps does not do it justice. On paper it's really crisp and pleasant to read.

    I hope MIT Press opens up The Craft of Prolog [2] too, a fantastic sequel to The Art of Prolog.

    [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/lucida...

    [2] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/craft-prolog

    • By jml7c5 2020-06-2122:072 reply

      It looks like the PDF is a 1-bit scan, so the text is a bit wobbly. Though I concur that Lucida Bright is lovely.

      I wonder if the MIT Press — or the author — has the source files (presumably LaTeX) somewhere. It would be a shame to have a low-quality scan as the "definitive" archived version.

      • By imglorp 2020-06-220:05

        The flyleaf (first ed, 3rd printing, 1986) says

            This book was set in TeX by Sarah Fliegelmann
    at the Weizmann Institute of Science
    and printed and bound by MIT Press
        That might be another lead.

    • By transfire 2020-06-220:211 reply

      I couldn't find it under Open Access. It's unfortunate. At a $104 I can't afford to buy. But I would love to read -- I would gladly pay $20 or so for an ebook.

      • By tzot 2020-06-220:52

        Don't try to locate it in “Open Access” at the top.

        Look the page in a desktop browser. Directly below the book's cover, there's a “Resources”. To the right of that “Resources”, there are “Overview”, “Author(s)”, “Open Access”; and that “Open Access” is the one you want.

    • By quickthrower2 2020-06-224:15

      Skip to page 42 for the start. Unless you want to read the forwards and prefaces.

    • By znpy 2020-06-2212:25

      thanks mate! I was already heading over to thepiratebay!

  • By xvilka 2020-06-221:14

    If anyone is interested in learning Prolog I can recommend two very good Prolog books: The Power of Prolog (from the author of the video)[1] and Simply Logical: Intelligent Reasoning by Example[2]. I also recommend visiting the Awesome Prolog list[3]. Worth checking also interesting extension of the Prolog - Probabilistic Prolog, aka ProbLog[4]. And modern ISO-compatible implementation in Rust language - Scryer Prolog[5].

    [1] https://www.metalevel.at/prolog

    [2] https://book.simply-logical.space/

    [3] https://github.com/klaussinani/awesome-prolog

    [4] https://github.com/ML-KULeuven/problog

    [5] https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog

  • By mark_l_watson 2020-06-2120:031 reply

    I gave away most of my technical books a few years ago, but I kept The Art if Prolog and about 50 other classics.

    It has been a while since I worked with Prolog professionally, but the memories are fond/good.

    Good to see that the PDF is available for download.

    For people who craft their code in languages like Python, Java, JavaScript, etc., I recommend just playing with an alternative language, whether it be Scheme, Common Lisp, Prolog, Haskell, ML, etc. Sometimes just a few evenings working through tutorials on the web is enough to expand the brain.

    • By Kototama 2020-06-2120:512 reply

      How did you decided that it was time to give away your technical books?

      • By inetsee 2020-06-2121:33

        (I'm not Mark) but I would expect it was an issue of space. About 6 years ago my wife and I moved from a house with a full basement to a condo. The house had 1200 sq feet, and the basement added another 1200 sq feet. The condo had 1400 sq feet. I had to get rid of about 1000 books and my wife had to get rid of more than 2000 books.

        I'm OK with ebooks (I actually prefer them), but my wife loves the feel of a real, physical book in her hands. Because of Covid-19 she has been reading more ebooks, but as soon as the library opened back up (with limitations) she went back to requesting as many books as she could.

      • By mark_l_watson 2020-06-2122:291 reply

        As inetsee said, it is because of space. I got rid of a whole wall of shelves in my home office to make room for a meditation area and room to have my instruments out and handy.

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