Prolog is an early computer programming language that uses first-order logic and is still in use today. It is particularly suited for language processing and is used in applications such as artificial intelligence and automated telecommunications. Prolog is a declarative programming language that uses a set of facts and relationships to produce a true or false output conclusion. It can be used to create GUIs and read facial expressions, but computational linguistics remains a challenge. Prolog can be integrated into higher-order logic software but faces issues with compression and portability.
Conceived in the early 1970s, Prolog, most likely a portmanteau of the words program and logic, is one of the earliest computer programming languages. Partly because it is very simple code, using first-order logic and little computation, it is still in common use. The original instruction set has been greatly expanded and developed into many variants because it is particularly suited to language processing. These two primary program attributes provide processing for applications such as artificial intelligence and automated telecommunications.
Prolog uses formal first-order logic. Instructions loaded onto a computer are stationary; they have no fuzzy computational weighting. In expression, the syntax of the language is a finite set of rules and the semantics are defined, usually by sets such as single descriptors, multiple lists and strings, or by a range such as numeric sequences.
Along with some better-known code such as hypertext markup language (HTML), Prolog is part of a class of software commonly called declarative programming languages, which typically use the simple “X equals Y” statement, defined as a “term” . A computer is told what to do; he is not in charge of calculating how to get there himself. The computer is supplied with a set of facts with a “predicate” and relationships, referred to as a “clause”, from which an input query should produce a true or false output conclusion. It doesn’t run an algorithm, but rather derives a simple answer by adding and subtracting, or negating, from its known set of definitions. Computer science in Prolog is used to test and prove theories and their underlying assumptions, from advanced mathematics to biology to philosophy.
One of the cognitive theories of intelligence is that there is a large but finite lexical store of information in the brain that is retrieved, processed and returned, resulting in greater complexity or simplicity of information. With the increase in memory capacity and rapid access, this is the dominant paradigm that has driven the holy grail of computing: artificial intelligence. What is fundamental according to many in the field is the interface and the language. Prolog programming can be used to create GUIs, the graphical user interface pioneered by Apple®, simply by defining visual symbols. It can also be used to read, translate and create facial expressions.
Computational linguistics is substantially more difficult, and while Prolog has progressed over the years to incorporate, for example, the unique grammatical principles of some foreign languages, many researchers question whether it actually represents language. For limited expert systems, such as computerized speech recognition helplines, Prolog programming is used to some degree of effectiveness. It can also be integrated into higher-order logic software—quantification languages like C+ or Java—but compression and portability remain persistent issues for this data-intensive programming language.
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