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Is F# for Prolog programmers too?
f#

Many apps for natural language processing have been built using Prolog, also AI apps, expert systems, etc. So, I ask the forum some kind of comparison, or info that would persuade in favor of F#.

Can Prolog programmers benefit from learning F#, porting apps to F# and then dump Prolog forever? :)

Thanks.

.

I am interested in the answer to a different but slightly related question. I would be interested in what you find out.

(I never used Prolog in any serious way, I was interested in a different class of Expert System issues which aren't represented by hard edged boolean logic and Predicate Calculus (or whatever it's called). So the following is not from a Prolog programmer and may be off beam.)

I expect you'll need to research this yourself. If you're really lucky somebody has done part of that already.

I think you'd need to build your own SLD resolution engine if you wanted an F# program to work the same as an existing Prolog program does.

By on 8/20/2008 10:06 PM ()

I although I did try prolog once, at university, over 10 years ago now, I can't actually claim to know it or even remember very much about it, so perhaps I shouldn't really comment, but here goes anyway:

I think learning F# will definitly benerfit anyone who is not already familar with the ML style of programming. I think F# is suffiently differnt to prolog that you'll definitely learn something. Perphas a good way to start is try and port a simple proglog and just see how it goes.

Cheers,
Rob

By on 8/20/2008 12:57 AM ()

Well, there is this guy, who developed C#Prolog -- A Prolog interpreter written in C# -- I do not see why it cannot be better using F#. Also, Prolog has been embedded into Haskell, Java and even js:

C# [link:sourceforge.net]
Haskell [link:lambda-the-ultimate.org]
Java [link:www.declarativa.com] (various other projects at Sourceforge.net)
Javascript [link:ioctl.org]

However, my line of question is related to using F#, instead of Prolog, for programming logic.

Take a look at this info:

Prolog is declarative.
Dialect Visual Prolog and others are strongly-typed and object-oriented.
Prolog supports tuples, currying, loops, recursion, list comprehension.
Prolog's single data type is the term. Terms are either: atoms (?), numbers, variables or compound terms (lists, strings).

I am beginning to think it is possible to dump prolog, now I have other questions. So, I'll follow the advise of trying porting a small program.

I'd like to receive your comments on this subject.

By on 8/20/2008 11:26 PM ()

Add Norvig's LISP version to that.

You could try to contact the developers of the other versions and ask how long it took them, to get some idea of what the project might involve!

By on 8/20/2008 11:51 PM ()

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