Cited by 109Logic, programming, and type systemsHistory of Computing TechnologiesNatural Language Processing Techniques

The birth of Prolog

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Colmerauer, Alain, Roussel, Philippe·1993·The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages

Abstract

The programming language, Prolog, was born of a project aimed not at producing a programming language but at processing natural languages; in this case, French. The project gave rise to a preliminary version of Prolog at the end of 1971 and a more definitive version at the end of 1972. This article gives the history of this project and describes in detail the preliminary and then the final versions of Prolog. The authors also felt it appropriate to describe the Q-systems since it was a language which played a prominent part in Prolog's genesis.

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  • Prolog is a logic programming language based on SLD-resolution and is therefore restricted to Horn clauses.

    “Prolog (Kowalski, 1988; Colmerauer & Roussel, 1993) is a logic programming language based on SLD-resolution and is therefore restricted to Horn clauses.”

    From Inductive Logic Programming At 30: A New Introduction (2022) · cites this paper as Colmerauer & Roussel, 1993

    In “Colmerauer and Roussel” (p. 3), the authors describe choosing linear resolution and say the strategy is complete when only Horn clauses are used. “Part IV. The final Prolog” (p. 10) also describes Prolog as resolution-based. These passages do not establish that Prolog is restricted to Horn clauses; the copy calls the method SL-resolution rather than SLD-resolution. (LLM, conf=0.84)

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Authors
Colmerauer, A., & Roussel, P.
Affiliations
Groupe Intelligence Artificielle, Faculte´ des Sciences de Luminy, France
Venue
The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages
Publisher
ACM
Published
1993-03
Pages
37-52
OpenAlex
W1969456304
Cited by
108
References
22
Citations by year
2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 2 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 6
FWCI
2.84
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Locations
ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of Programming Languages (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Logic, programming, and type systems
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › History of Computing Technologies
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Natural Language Processing Techniques
Keywords
Prolog, history of programming languages, natural language processing, French language processing, Q-system, logic programming, programming language design

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