Logic Programming

This is one of the few texts that combines three essential theses in the study of logic programming: the logic that gives logic programs their unique character: the practice of programming effectively using the logic; and the efficient implementation of logic programming on computers.

The Tenth International Conference on Logic Programming, sponsored by the Association for Logic Programming, is a major forum for presentations of research, applications, and implementations in this important area of computer science.

Foundation of logic historically dates back to the times of Aristotle, who pioneered the concept of truth/falsehood paradigm in reasoning. Mathematical logic of propositions and predicates, which are based on the classical models of Aristotle, underwent a dramatic evolution during the last 50 years for its increasing applications in automated reasoning on digital computers. The subject of Logic Programming is concerned with automated reasoning with facts and knowledge to answer a user’s query following the syntax and semantics of the logic of propositions/predicates. The credit of automated reasoning by logic programs goes to Professor Robinson for his well-known resolution theorem that provides a general scheme to select two program clauses for deriving an inference.

Prolog Versus You shows how you can take up the gauntlet of the logic programming language Prolog (PROgramming in LOGic) and use it as an obedient programming and problem solving tool. Logic programming emphasizes that programming is a human activity and consequently that programs should be easy for humans to write, understand and manipulate. In a program knowledge about the problem is stated in a logical language without consideration of the underlying machine language.