The Art of Prolog Advanced Programming Techniques by L. Sterling and E. Shapiro The MIT Press ISBN 0 - 2 6 2 - 1 9 2 5 0 - 0 Reviewed by: Witkor Marek marek@ms.uky.edu PROLOG, logic programming based languages, became v e r y popular in the eighties, taking a circuitous route to the United States; from Europe to Japan to mainstream American computer science. Those using and teaching PROLOG are no more c o n sidered to be doing something bizarre and unusual. A n u m b e r of Universities teach PROLOG n o w in their regular undergraduate courses. For a couple of years the AI c o m m u n i t y w r o n g l y believed that PROLOG (or LISP for that matter) is a must for w r i t i n g an expert system. Fortunately this m i s c o n c e p tion was cleared in the recent t w o or three years. It is beneficial for the subject (of functional and logic p r o g r a m m i n g ) and hopefully it clears it from the hype provided by popular press. Clearly, Logic Programming and PROLOG as its first mature representation (with m a n y others in various stages of d e v e l o p m e n t and maturity) are here to stay. It is interesting to observe the publishers and authors reaction to the PROLOG phenomenon. For several years the o n l y reasonable available text (beyond circulated typescripts like "How to solve it in PROLOG') was the Clocksin and Mellish book "Programming in PROLOG". The situation changed rapidly in the past three years; there are (judging from university bookstore shelves and publishers advertisements) at least 20 books devoted to PROLOG. The reviewed book is a clear mark of the maturity of the subject, it is also a very good book. In m y opinion its value lays (besides of very clear presentation and, generally, excellent style) in careful separation of those layers of PROLOG which c o m e f r o m "pure" Logic Programming and other parts used to make real p r o g r a m m i n g possible (meta - and extra logical p r e d i cates and data structures). The reviewed text consists of four parts. The first one is devoted to Logic Programming. The concepts of logic variables, unification, rules, and first o r der logic a r e well treated in this par-t. The second part, the most important if you w a n t to use it as a textbook, presents PROLOG. This part covers all c o n t e n t of PROLOG, explains its dependency on rule o r der, introduces arithmetic as available in standard PROLOGs, structures (i.e. Skolemization facilities), m e t a logical predicates and variables manipulation. The "cut" s y m b o l is extensively treated as well as i n p u t / o u t p u t facilities. This part is expanded bv a chapter of Draamatics of p r o g r a m m i n g in PROLOG. Part III; called "Advanced Prolog Programming Techniques" is a mixed bag: It contains,for instance, p r o gramming hints (like generate and test technique) but also description of elementary set handling techniques in PROLOG, search techniques and meta interpreters. If you w a n t to see how PROLOG can be used in a p plications you may consult part IV, where, besides of games, you find t w o "serious" applications of PROLOG which give some taste of the capabilities of this language: w r i t i n g a compiler (of a suitably chosen p r o g r a m m i n g language) in PROLOG and an algebraic manipulation s y s tem. It is fair to say that this is an excellent book. It is also carefully edited and neatly produced. There are t w o companions to this book: a PROLOG Interpreter (WISDOM PROLOG) and Programming Examples, both available f r o m the Publisher. NEW BOOKS PARALLELISM IN PRODUCTION SYSTEMS Anoop Gupta ISBN 0 - 9 3 4 5 1 3 - 5 5 - 9 , March 1988, 224 pp.,$22.95 Morgan Kaufmann Publishers P.O. Box 50490 Palo Alto, CA 94043 Of interest to AI system designers and researchers in expert systems, this m o n o g r a p h explores the role of p a r a l lelism in the high-speed execution of production systems. It presents simulation results for a large set of p r o d u c t i o n systems exploiting different sources of parallelism. The thesis points out the features of existing programs t h a t limit the s p e e d - u p obtainable f r o m parallelism and s u g gests solutions for some of the bottlenecks. local and global levels. Novel a l g o r i t h m s are developed, analyzed and c o m p u t a t i o n a l i t y deployed for all stages of p r o c e s s i n g - - f r o m obtaining local m o t i o n constraints to s e g m e n t a t i o n and 3D interpretation. ANALOGICA: PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST WORKSHOP ON ANALOGICAL REASONING Armand Preiditis ISBN 0 - 9 3 4 6 1 3 - 3 7 - 0 , March 1988, 160 pp., $22.95, Paperbound Morgan Kaufmann Publishers A n a l o g y is perhaps at the very heart of human p r o b l e m solving, m e t a p h o r c o m p r e h e n s i o n , and teaching excellence. Despite increased interest in analogy, the multidisciplinary nature of analogical reasoning has been largely ignored. This m o n o g r a p h represents the state of the art in analogical reasoning by drawing t o g e t h e r a series of original papers presented at the first w o r k s h o p on analogical reasoning held at Rutgers University in December, 1985. Such a multidisciplinary approach ties t o g e t h e r the fields of machine learning, c o g n i t i v e p s y c h o l ogy, p h i l o s o p h y of science, and linguistics. LOCAL AND GLOBAL INTERPRETATION OF MOVING IMAGES Guy L. Scott ISBN 0 - 9 3 4 6 1 3 - 6 2 - 1 , March 1988, 150 pp., $19.95, Paperbound Morgan.- Kaufmann Publishers This Research Note is c o n c e r n e d with the t h e o r y and practice of processing real t i m e - v a r y i n g i m a g e r y at both SIGART Newsletter, July 1988, Number 105 Page 12

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