Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!munnari.oz!lee
From: lee@munnari.oz (Lee Naish)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Intr programming/Prolog text wanted
Message-ID: <1437@murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au>
Date: 27 Apr 89 08:41:04 GMT
References: <2009@erix.ericsson.se>
Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au
Reply-To: lee@munmurra.UUCP (Lee Naish)
Organization: University of Melbourne, Comp Sci Dept
Lines: 29

In article <2009@erix.ericsson.se> goran@erix.ericsson.se (G|ran B}ge) writes:
>
>Anybody out there know of a good introductory programming textbook
>using Prolog or a Prolog like programming language? I'd like to
>get such a book for my son (16), who has shown some programming
>interest.

I recently got a copy of "Introduction to Programming in Prolog" by
Danny Crookes, Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science,
1988, ISBN 0-13-710146-5.

I have not read it all the way through in detail but from what I have
seen, I think its a really neat little introduction to Prolog.  One of
the things I like about it is that it doesn't mention cut until page 215
(out of 218 pages).  One of the main complaints I have of most Prolog
texts is that they talk about cut too early and they use it too much.
Of course you need to know about cut to be a *real* Prolog programmer
but I think for someone who is interested in playing around to begin
with, cut is best ignored.  The book uses 'not' rather than cut.

One of the (minor but) rather annoying things about the book is that it
insists on putting white space between functors and left parentheses.
It would also be nicer to include a better list of references for
further reading (all it mentions is Clocksin & Mellish - the original
but not the best, Malpas - better than most in my opinion, and
Bratko - I use this for an AI course but have had to rewrite virtually
every Prolog program in it).

	Lee Naish