• •

Lecture 3: Recursion

• Theory
– Introduce recursive definitions in Prolog
– Four examples
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

– Show that there can be mismatches between the

declarative and procedural meaning of a Prolog
program

• Exercises
– Exercises of LPN chapter 3
– Practical work

Recursive Definitions

• Prolog predicates can be defined

recursively
• A predicate is recursively defined if one
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

or more rules in its definition refers to

itself

• • 1
• •

Example 1: Eating

isDigesting(X,Y):- justAte(X,Y).
isDigesting(X,Y):- justAte(X,Z), isDigesting(Z,Y).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

justAte(mosquito,blood(john)).
justAte(frog,mosquito).
justAte(stork,frog).

?-

Picture of the situation

justAte
X Y
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

isDigesting

• • 2
• •

Picture of the situation

justAte
X Y
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

isDigesting

justAte isDigesting
X Z Y
isDigesting

Example 1: Eating

isDigesting(X,Y):- justAte(X,Y).
isDigesting(X,Y):- justAte(X,Z), isDigesting(Z,Y).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

justAte(mosquito,blood(john)).
justAte(frog,mosquito).
justAte(stork,frog).

?- isDigesting(stork,mosquito).

• • 3
•
•

© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz © Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

?-

?- p.
p:- p.
p:- p.

Another recursive definition

Another recursive definition

•
•

4
• •

Another recursive definition

p:- p.
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

?- p.
ERROR: out of memory

Example 2: Decendant

child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).
descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), child(Z,Y).

• • 5
• •

Example 2: Decendant

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

child(donna,emily).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).
descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), child(Z,Y).

Example 2: Decendant

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

child(donna,emily).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).
descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), child(Z,Y).

?- descend(anna,donna).
no
?-

• • 6
• •

Example 2: Decendant

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
child(donna,emily).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).
descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), child(Z,Y).
descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), child(Z,U), child(U,Y).

?-

Example 2: Decendant

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

child(donna,emily).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).
descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), descend(Z,Y).

?-

• • 7
• •

Example 2: Decendant

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

child(donna,emily).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).
descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), descend(Z,Y).

?- descend(anna,donna).

Search tree

• Draw search tree for

?- descend(anna,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

• • 8
• •

Example 3: Successor

• Suppose we use the following way to

write numerals:
1. 0 is a numeral.
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

2. If X is a numeral, then so is succ(X).

Example 3: Successor

numeral(0).
numeral(succ(X)):- numeral(X).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

• • 9
• •

Example 3: Successor

numeral(0).
numeral(succ(X)):- numeral(X).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

?- numeral(succ(succ(succ(0)))).
yes
?-

Example 3: Successor

numeral(0).
numeral(succ(X)):- numeral(X).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

?- numeral(X).

• • 10
• •

Example 3: Successor

numeral(0).
numeral(succ(X)):- numeral(X).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

?- numeral(X).
X=0;
X=succ(0);
X=succ(succ(0));
X=succ(succ(succ(0)));
X=succ(succ(succ(succ(0))))

Example 4: Addition
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

?- add(succ(succ(0)),succ(succ(succ(0))), Result).
Result=succ(succ(succ(succ(succ(0)))))
yes

• • 11
• •

Example 4: Addition

add(0,X,X). %%% base clause

© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

?- add(succ(succ(0)),succ(succ(succ(0))), Result).
Result=succ(succ(succ(succ(succ(0)))))
yes

Example 4: Addition

add(0,X,X). %%% base clause

add(succ(X),Y,succ(Z)):- %%% recursive clause

© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

add(X,Y,Z).

?- add(succ(succ(0)),succ(succ(succ(0))), Result).
Result=succ(succ(succ(succ(succ(0)))))
yes

• • 12
•
•

© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz © Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

• Draw search tree

Exercises
Search tree

•
•

13
• •

Prolog and Logic

• Prolog was the first reasonable attempt

to create a logic programming language
– Programmer gives a declarative
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

specification of the problem, using the

language of logic
– The programmer should not have to tell
the computer what to do
– To get information, the programmer simply
asks a query

Prolog and Logic

• Prolog does some important steps in

this direction, but nevertheless,
Prolog is not a full logic programming
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

language!
• Prolog has a specific way of answering
queries:
– Search knowledge base from top to
bottom
– Processes clauses from left to right
– Backtracking to recover from bad choices

• • 14
• •

descend1.pl

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

child(donna,emily).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).
descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), descend(Z,Y).

?- descend(A,B).
A=anna
B=bridget

descend2.pl

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

child(donna,emily).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Z), descend(Z,Y).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).

?- descend(A,B).
A=anna
B=emily

• • 15
• •

descend3.pl

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

child(donna,emily).

descend(X,Y):- descend(Z,Y), child(X,Z).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).

?- descend(A,B).
ERROR: OUT OF LOCAL STACK

descend4.pl

child(anna,bridget).
child(bridget,caroline).
child(caroline,donna).
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

child(donna,emily).

descend(X,Y):- child(X,Y).
descend(X,Y):- descend(Z,Y), child(X,Z).

?- descend(A,B).

• • 16
• •

Summary of this lecture

• In this lecture we introduced recursive

predicates
• We also looked at the differences
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

between the declarative and the

procedural meaning of Prolog programs
• We have identified some of the
shortcomings of Prolog seen as a
logical programming language

Next lecture

• Introduce lists in Prolog

– Important recursive data structure in
Prolog programming
© Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos & Kristina Striegnitz

– Define the member/2 predicate, a

fundamental Prolog tool for working with
lists
– Discuss the idea of recursing down lists

• • 17