Prolog basic questions

Question

First, what do you recommend as a book for learning prolog. Second, is there an easy way to load many .pl files at once? Currently just doing one at a time with ['name.pl'] but it is annoying to do over and over again. I am also using this to learn.

Thanks

Answer 1

First, welcome to Prolog! I think you'll find it rewarding and enjoyable.

The books I routinely see recommended are The Art of Prolog, Programming Prolog and Clause and Effect. I have Art and Programming and they're both fine books; Art is certainly more encyclopedic and Programming is more linear. I consult Art and Craft a lot lately, and some weirder ones (Logic Grammars for example). I'm hoping to buy Prolog Programming in Depth next. I don't think there are a lot of bad Prolog books out there one should try to avoid. I would probably save Craft and Practice for later though.

You can load multiple files at once by listing them:

:- [file1, file2, file3].

ALso, since 'name.pl' ends in '.pl' you can omit the quotes; single quotes are really only necessary if Prolog wouldn't take the enclosed to be an atom ordinarily.

Hope this helps and good luck on your journey. :)

Answer 2

If you are incline to a mathematical introduction, Logic, Programming and Prolog (2ED) is an interesting book, by Nilsson and Maluszinski.

Programming in Prolog, by Clocksin and Mellish, is the classic introductory textbook.

Answer 3

In SWI-Prolog, also check out:

?- make.

to automatically reload files that were modified since they were consulted.