I am new to prolog, and using BProlog.
I have been reading some example program to execute query on group of related data. But in order to infer from facts with similar structure, they wrote many predicates like search_by_name
,search_by_point
, which are partly duplicated.
% working search in example
search_by_name(Key,Value) :-
Key == name,
sname(ID,Value),
point(ID,Point),
write(Value),write(Point),nl.
And when I try to replace them with a more general version like this:
% a more general search I want to write
% but not accepted by BProlog
search_by_attr(Key,Value) :-
Key(ID,Value),
sname(ID,Name),
point(ID,Point),
write(Name),write(Point),nl.
error arised:
| ?- consult('students.pl')
consulting::students.pl
** Syntax error (students.pl, 17-21)
search_by_attr(Key,Value) :-
Key<<HERE>>(ID,Value),
sname(ID,Name),
point(ID,Point),
write(Name),write(Point),nl.
1 error(s)
Am I doing it the wrong way, or is such subtitution impossible in prolog?
code and example data can be found at https://gist.github.com/2426119
I don't know any Prolog that accept variables functors. There is call/N, or univ+call/1.
search_by_attr(Key,Value) :-
call(Key, ID, Value), % Key(ID,Value)
...
or
search_by_attr(Key,Value) :-
C =.. [Key, ID, Value], % univ
call(C), % Key(ID,Value)
...