[Haskell-cafe] Learn Prolog...

[Bill Wood]

On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 07:43 +0800, Hugh Perkins wrote:
> On 9/3/07, Derek Elkins <derek.a.elkins at gmail.com> 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.