human judgment in diagnosing problem behavior in horses using

• A powerful search and backtracking inference mechanism,
• A powerful built-in ‘pattern matching’ mechanism,
• A simple but sophisticated data structure with the ability to manipulate the data
structure.
There is also a uniformity of Program and Data. In Prolog the data and the
program are in fact just two different ways of looking at the Prolog objects. Items can be
freely created and deleted in a uniform database. Thus as there is no distinction between
program and data, Prolog has the ability to change its program whilst that program is
running. There are no pointers, assignments, or “go_to” statements in Prolog. Recursion
is also a very natural programming technique in Prolog.
Another important aspect of Prolog is that it is related to a logic called predicate
calculus. This gives Prolog a number of distinct properties that it inherits from logic and
gives it better foundations than other conventional programming languages. One of the
properties is that it is a declarative language. This allows one to develop a program by
concentrating on “what” needs to be done instead of “how” it is done. It can also allow a
program to be understood without the need to follow through its dynamic execution.
However, the true power of Prolog comes not from any single feature, but from the result
of having these features combined.
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