Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!ucbvax!info-ridge From: info-ridge-request@HOPKINS-EECS-BRAVO.ARPA Newsgroups: mod.computers.ridge Subject: (none) Message-ID: <8512020424.AA06825@ucbvax.berkeley.edu> Date: Sun, 1-Dec-85 23:24:31 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8512020424.AA06825 Posted: Sun Dec 1 23:24:31 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 2-Dec-85 06:15:52 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 106 Approved: info-ridge@hopkins-eecs-bravo.arpa Received: by munnari (4.44) id AA28083; Mon, 2 Dec 85 09:49:14 EST Date: Mon, 2 Dec 85 09:49:14 EST From: gln@munnari.oz (Gary Nelson) To: INFO-RIDGE@hopkins Here is a description of MU-Prolog that was supplied to me by the authors at the University of Melbourne. Although I have not used it yet myself, they seem to be making very productive use of it. I am forwarding this information merely as a service to the Ridge community. Any questions should be directed to: jas%munnari.oz@CSNET-RELAY _________________________________________________________________ MU-Prolog Release 3.2 Release 3.2 of the MU-Prolog system will soon be available, for educational and research purposes only. It is written in C and is especially suitable for Unix environments, although it is also available for VMS systems. It is currently running under a number of different versions of Unix (System III, System V, BSD 4.1, BSD 4.2, OSx, UTX) on a variety of architectures (Vax 11/780, Vax 11/750, Perkin-Elmer 3240, Gould PN-3000, Pyramid 90x, Sun, other MC68000 systems). Note that because of its memory requirements (around 0.5Mb) it will not run on systems without virtual memory or large real memories. There is a handling charge of $A200.00 associated with the distribution. Features of MU-Prolog (1) All UNIX Prolog and most C-Prolog and DEC-10 Prolog facilities are provided. The syntax is compatible with DEC-10 Prolog (the de facto standard). (2) There are extra control facilities which enable a coroutining style of execution. User-defined procedures may have wait declarations which can delay calls to these procedures. Calls to many system predicates may also be delayed. (3) Three sound forms of negation are provided: not (~), not equals (~=) and if-then-else. Calls to these predicates are delayed if they are insufficiently instantiated. (4) A logic pre-processor (lpp) allows programmers to write in a style closer to first-order logic, which is then translated into standard Prolog, and control information is automatically added. New Features in MU-Prolog 3.2 (5) A dynamic loading facility for linking compiled object code into a running MU-Prolog interpreter (Unix only). (6) The database system has been extended to allow the user to incorporate (via dynamic loading) his/her own indexing schemes to access external databases from MU-Prolog. For systems on which dynamic loading is not available, database access schemes must be compiled into MU-Prolog. (7) Two external database indexing schemes are supplied with the system: a recursive linear hashing scheme to store and retrieve ground Prolog facts; a superimposed codeword index scheme to store and retrieve general Prolog terms (including variables). Both indexing schemes provide efficient partial match retrieval, even on very large databases (greater than 1 million facts). (8) A simple clause indexing scheme can be invoked to provide fast access to facts and rules in the internal database. To obtain a copy of the MU-Prolog system, two signed licence agreements and a cheque for $A200.00, payable to The University of Melbourne, must be sent to: MU-Prolog Distribution Department of Computer Science University of Melbourne Parkville, 3052 Australia Please include details of your installation (that is, make/model/location of host machines) and what mediums you can read (1600 bpi tape in Unix tar format is easiest for us, but VMS BACKUP format can also be arranged). The MU-Prolog system has been developed at the University of Melbourne primarily by Lee Naish. The recursive linear-hashed database system was developed in conjunction with James Thom. The superimposed codeword database system was designed by Dr. Kotagiri Ramamohanarao and implemented by him and John Shepherd. The clause indexing scheme was developed by Jeff Schultz. MU-Prolog 3.2 will be fully available around October-November 1985. Work is underway at the University of Melbourne to develop a compiler for the MU-Prolog language which will offer a substantial performance improvement over the interpreter. MU- Prolog 3.2 will be the last release of the MU-Prolog interpreter before the release of the compiler.