Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ut-sally!utah-cs!defun.utah.edu!shebs
From: shebs%defun.utah.edu.uucp@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: BSI standards
Message-ID: <5334@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: 9 Mar 88 15:23:29 GMT
References: <8803082357.AA01587@decwrl.dec.com>
Sender: news@utah-cs.UUCP
Reply-To: shebs%defun.utah.edu.UUCP@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 16

In article <8803082357.AA01587@decwrl.dec.com> vantreeck@curie.dec.com writes:

>I also see proposals for new data types, e.g., character, string, and list. I
>wish someone could explain why these are really needed as part of standard.
>PROLOG is supposed to be a high level language. It's advantage over lower
>level languages is that it allows one to program at a more abstract level.

String and list types have good and bad points, but the lack of character
types in older Prologs is a great embarassment.  Numbers like 26 and 65 
are sadly common, as is doing arithmetic on these to implement character
operations.  I think it's safe to say that any language requiring the use
of numbers to represent some other type of object is not "high level", at
least with respect to that type.

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu