I am teaching myself Prolog and have been given a handful of examples.
One of which uses the dynamic/1
built-in directive:
:- dynamic(items/1).
I get the idea of dynamic. That one can modify predicates via the assert, and retract predicates.
However, the program also uses the following in places:
:- dynamic(location/2).
What is the difference between the two /1 and /2, is their also a /3 .... /n?
In Prolog, predicates are identified by their name (or functor) and their number of arguments (or arity). Thus, items/1
denotes a predicate with functor items
and arity 1
while location/2
denotes a predicate with functor location
and arity 2
. Two predicates with the same functor but different arities are different predicates.