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copied!<blockquote> <p>What are the names of the algorithms and concepts used in Prolog?</p> </blockquote> <ul> <li><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Logic_programming" rel="noreferrer">Logic programming</a></li> <li>Depth-first, <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Backtracking" rel="noreferrer">backtracking</a> search</li> <li><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Unification_%28computer_science%29" rel="noreferrer">Unification</a></li> </ul> <p>See Sterling & Shapiro, <em>The Art of Prolog</em> (MIT Press) for the theory behind Prolog.</p> <blockquote> <p>Probably it builds some kind of tree structure or directed object graph, and then upon queries it traveres that graph with a sophisticated algorithm. A Depth First Search maybe.</p> </blockquote> <p>It doesn't build the graph explicitly, that wouldn't even be possible with infinite search spaces. Check out the first chapters of <a href="http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/" rel="noreferrer">Russell & Norvig</a> for the concept of state-space search. Yes, it does depth-first search with backtracking, but no, that isn't very sophisticated. It's just very convenient and programming alternative search strategies isn't terribly hard in Prolog.</p> <blockquote> <p>understanding Prolog seems to be a great way to start, imho.</p> </blockquote> <p>Depends on what you want to do, but knowing Prolog certainly doesn't hurt. It's a very different way of looking at programming. Knowing Prolog helped me understand functional programming very quickly.</p> <blockquote> <p>My idea is to try to rebuild something similar and skipping the parser part completely</p> </blockquote> <p>You mean skipping the Prolog syntax? If you happen to be familiar with Scheme or Lisp, then check out <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-29.html" rel="noreferrer">section 4.4 of Abelson & Sussman</a> where they explain how to implement a logic programming variant of Scheme, in Scheme.</p>

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