PROLOG-REQUEST@SU-SCORE.ARPA (Chuck Restivo, The Moderator) (10/17/86)
PROLOG Digest Monday, 20 Oct 1986 Volume 4 : Issue 56
Today's Topics:
Applications - Chemistry,
Implementation - Porting Problems,
LP Library - Reviews & Bibliography
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Date: Thu, 16 Oct 86 08:53 EDT
From: Ed Fox <"VTOPUS::FOX%vpi.vt.edu"@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: LP and Chemistry
Jacob:
A student of mine, Marc Tischler, who is now at HP,
and I developed an expert system for analytical chemistry
using the Melbourne Australia Prolog interpreter, MU-Prolog
(which has some nice extensions beyond C-Prolog). MU-Prolog
allows interfacing to C routines on our UNIX system, so the
user interface portion could use the Curses package.
An article about this entitled "An Expert System for
Selecting Liquid Chromatographic Separation Methods" will appear
next year in "Computers and Chemistry" in case you are interested.
However, the domain of our system is quite a bit different from
organic synthesis planning.
Regards,
-- Ed Fox
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Date: 15 Oct 86 00:59:34 GMT
From: Thomas C Crayner <tc@ee.ecn.purdue.edu>
Subject: C-Prolog Porting Problems
We are attempting to port "C Prolog", Version 1.3, from
the Vax version to the Computer Consoles Inc. 6/32 machine
(running 4.3BSD). The machine is quite similar to the Vax
in architecture, but there are minor differences which often
cause major problems.
C-Prolog compiles with no unusual errors, but running the
program in boot mode ("prolog -b pl/init <bootcmds") gives
either a memory fault or address error in deref() (in unify.c).
Adb reveals that this is caused by a reference in the 0x40000000
range, the same range used by "input variables." It seems to have
been near the end of "pl/grammar" when this occurred.
One change that was made was to modify the bit masks (PRIM_TAG,
etc.) so that primitives start at 0xc0000000 instead of 0x80000000,
because the stack in this Unix version is based there. Is this
necessary, i.e. is any use of pointers to stack locals (which would
be "negative" on the CCI) done, or can the masks be left alone?
Other than the stack, memory is organized very similarly to the
Vax port. Any assistance would be most appreciated.
-- Peter S. Housel
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Date: 16 Oct 86 07:48:00 EDT
From: "CUGINI, JOHN" <cugini@nbs-vms.ARPA>
Subject: Reviews
I'm in the middle of reading the Bratko book, and I would give
it a very high rating. The concepts are explained very clearly,
there are lots of good examples, and the applications covered
are of high interest. Part I (chapters 1-8) is about Prolog
per se. Part II (chapters 9-16) shows how to implement many
standard AI techniques:
chap. 9 - Operations on Data Structures
chap. 10 - Advanced Tree Representations
chap. 11 - Basic Problem-solving Strategies
chap. 12 - Best-first: a heuristic search principle
chap. 13 - Problem reduction and AND/OR graphs
chap. 14 - Expert Systems
chap. 15 - Game Playing
chap. 16 - Pattern-directed Programming
Part I has 188 pages, part II has 214.
You didn't mention Programming in Prolog by Clocksin & Mellish -
this is also very good, and covers some things that Bratko
doesn't (it's more concerned with non-AI applications), but all
in all, I slightly prefer Bratko's book.
-- John Cugini
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Date: Mon, 6 Oct 86 15:47:15 MDT
From: Lauren Smith <ls%lambda@LANL.ARPA>
Subject: Bibliography on its way
I have just sent out the latest update of the Declarative
Languages bibliography. Please notify the appropriate
people at your site - especially if there were several
requests from your site, and you became the de facto
distributor. Again, the bibliography is 24 files.
This is the index for the files, so you can verify that you
received everything.
ABDA76a-AZAR85a BACK74a-BYTE85a CAMP84a-CURR72a DA83a-DYBJ83b
EGAN79a-EXET86a FAGE83a-FUTO85a GABB84a-GUZM81a HALI84a-HWAN84a
ICOT84a-IYEN84a JACOB86a-JULI82a KAHN77a-KUSA84b LAHT80a-LPG86a
MACQ84a-MYCR84a NAGAI84a-NUTE85a OHSU85a-OZKA85a PAPAD86a-PYKA85a
QUI60 RADE84a-RYDE85a SAIN84a-SZER82b TAGU84a-TURN85b
UCHI82a-UNGA84 VALI85-VUIL74a WADA86a-WORL85a YAGH83a-YU84a
There has been alot of interest regarding the formatting of
the bibliography for various types of word processing systems.
The biblio is maintained (in the UK) in a raw format, hence that
is the way that I am distributing it. Since everyone uses
different systems, it seems easiest to collect a group of macros
that convert RAW FORMAT ===> FAVORITE BIBLIO FORMAT and distribute
them. So, if you have a macro that does the conversion please
advertise it on the net or better yet, let me know so I can let
everyone else know about it.
If you have any additions to make, please send them to:
-- Andy Cheese at
abc%computer-science.nottingham.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
or Lauren Smith at ls@lanl.arpa
Thank you for your interest.
-- Lauren Smith
[ I will be including one file per issue of the Digest until
all twenty four files are distributed starting with the next
issue. -ed ]
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End of PROLOG Digest
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