Week 8

Question 1

What is an Atom in Prolog?

Answer 1

A constant that does not have a numerical value. It begins with lowercase letter, or is quoted “”

The idea is to use lists of atoms instead of concatenated strings

eg.

Buffalo

malcolmX

‘The X Files’

Question 2

Is it possible to split atoms in Prolog?

Answer 2

It is possible (but difficult) to split atoms into lists of ASCII codes, and to make atoms from lists of ASCII codes

eg.

ace -> [97,99,101] (ASCII digits)

[97,99,101] -> ace

Question 3

What are lists in Prolog?

Answer 3

Made up of elements (possibly of different type) enclosed in square brackets and separated by commas

Question 4

What is the Cons List notation in Prolog?

Answer 4

The cons (or “|”) notation allows one to create a list from the first few elements and the rest

[1,2,3|[4,5]]

Question 5

What is Pattern Matching in Prolog?

Answer 5

The cons (or “|”) notation allows one to pattern match against a list using variables for the first few elemtns and the rest