Re: [Haskell-cafe] Learn Prolog...

On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 07:43 +0800, Hugh Perkins wrote:

On 9/3/07, Derek Elkins wrote:

...

Because no one has said it quite this way: The modern equivalent of Prolog is Prolog.

I was just about to say the same thing :-); thanks, Derek. . . .

(btw, just thought, when I was talking about FFI, probably meant Forth, not Prolog. FFI for Prolog probably isnt that important.)

No, Foreign Function Interfaces are as useful with Prolog as with any other high-level language. (BTW I thought the FFI for Forth was the Forth assembler; have things changed since FIG/F83?) I just did a fast scan and found that XSB and SWI Prolog seem to be still quite active. If you have a few bucks (or euros) sicstus is also available. I was quite satisfied with XSB, though my experience is somewhat dated now. It is somewhat idiosyncratic (they're talking about getting closer to ISO Prolog with their latest release). I have also had good results with SWI. Both of them support some CLP libraries. GNU Prolog is also out there, but I don't know how active development is (please, I said I don't know, not that I thought it was becoming moribund). I've used it a little. It also comes with something of a CLP library. It looks like you can get an individual license for sicstus for ca. 155 euros. I used it a lot about three years ago and it seemed to be quite stable, had good performance, and we received good support. Of course we were a big corporate customer. Prolog seems to be quite alive and kicking.