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Why do miniKanren names always end with `o`?

All miniKanren relations end with the letter o. What is the motivation for this? I see that the Clojure core.logic library also does this.

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Eli Schneider Avatar asked Feb 06 '12 17:02

Eli Schneider


2 Answers

In the Preface of The Reasoned Schemer, they explain it thus:

A relation, a function that returns a goal as its value, ends its name with a superscript 'o' (e.g., caro and nullo).

So, it's a notation to denote a relation.

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Chris Jester-Young Avatar answered Nov 13 '22 19:11

Chris Jester-Young


It's because the authors of The Reasoned Schemer wanted the notation of miniKanren relations to be evocative of ordinary Scheme predicates which end in ? (e.g., null?, pair?) by convention. The superscript o, if you squint enough (and have heard this story before), looks like a modified ?.

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acfoltzer Avatar answered Nov 13 '22 19:11

acfoltzer