Book review: Prolog for Programmers by Feliks Kluzniak and Stanislaw Szpakowicz (Academic Press)

Prolog for Programmers (PP) delivers what it promises by introducing Prolog to programmers from other languages; I know of no better introduction for this audience. (The dialect used is a slight variant of DEC-10 Prolog.) Yet even the experienced Prolog programmer can gain from PP's first-rate treatment of data structures, control, programming techniques, and implementation. The style is clear and concise, and a dry wit makes it fun to read. PP could be used as language text in an introductory Al course; for example, we have used it along with Genesereth and Nilsson's Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence. PP also addresses broader issues such as language extensibility with a chapter on definite-clause grammars; database with a case study of relational databases in Prolog; planning with an analysis of a STRIPS problem in WARPLAN; and implementation and optimization with a discussion of the authors' own Prolog interpreter. PP furnishes source for the interpreter and case studies in listings as well as on a floppy diskette.