Monika wrote some time ago and asked me about discrepancies
between poprulebase procedures and the ordinary Pop-11 database.
My attempts to reply to her at
monika.sester@ifp.uni-stuttgart.de
have failed with "timed-out" messages, so I am hoping this
route via pop-forum and comp.lang.pop will work.
If anyone else is able to send her email please copy this to her.
The following could also be relevant to others who are exploring
Poprulebase Available in the file prbtar.gz in
ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/
or browsable online in
ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/prb/
Anyhow, in response to Monika's questions I have produced a new
help file HELP PRB_DATABASE, which starts:
================================================================
HELP PRB_DATABASE Aaron Sloman Feb 1997
This file provides information and advice for users who are already
familiar with the ordinary Pop-11 database and are now switching to
using LIB POPRULEBASE. This file enlarges on the information provided in
HELP * POPRULEBASE
TEACH * RULEBASE
TEACH * POPRULEBASE
================================================================
It is included in the prbtar.gz file and can also be fetched on
its own from
ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/prb/help/prb_database
please note that it is still a draft and more work is needed.
Later I may find time to add facilities that make it easier to
switch between old database utilities (e.g. foreach) and the
prb_database representation (a property associating key words
with lists of database entries to reduce search time).
Comments, criticisms, and suggestions always welcome.
[Note: poprulebase is at the heart of the sim_agent toolkit, in
the simtar.gz file, browsable online via
ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/sim/ ]
For those who have not yet received Poplog Verstion 15.5. In that
version the infix operator "=" has been generalised to perform
the function of the pattern matcher in connection with new
pattern variable datatypes. So now a vector can contain variables
for use with a pattern matcher.
At some point I shall consider whether to use this as a basis for
re-implementing poprulebase in order to allow more general
patterns, e.g. vector patterns.
Aaron
===
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-121-414-4775 (Sec 3711) Fax: +44-121-414-4281
|