It is apparent from the Common Prolog syntax that the first element of any valid goal expression must be a symbol. Common Prolog takes advantage of this fact and gives a special interpretation to a goal with a list in the first position. A list in the car of a goal is treated as a Lisp expression with normal Lisp evaluation rules. Any logic variables in the expression are instantiated with their values. (They must be bound). The rest of the goal expression should be a list of expressions to be unified with the values returned by the Lisp evaluation. Any extra values returned are ignored, and any extra expressions in the tail of a goal are unified with new unbound variables.
|==> ((print "foo")) | |"foo" |YES. | |==> (and (= ?x 3) ((* ?x ?x) ?y)) ; Note that "?y" is unified with 9
|?X = 3 |?Y = 9 | |==> ((* 3 3) 10)
|NO. | |==> ((floor 3 4) ?x ?y) | |?X = 0 |?Y = 3
|==> ((floor 3 4) ?x) | |?X = 0 | |==> ((* 3 4) ?x ?y) | |?X = 12 |?Y = ?0 ; note that system generated variables look like: ; ?<integer>
|==> ((typep 3 'integer) ?x) | |?X = T | |==> ((typep 3 'integer) t) | |YES. | |==> (and ((floor 5 3) ?x) ((floor 4 3) ?x)) | |?X = 1 | |==> ((cons 3 4) (?x . ?y)) | |?X = 3 |?Y = 4 | |==> (and (= ?op *) ((list ?op 3 4) ?y) (call (?y ?z))) | |?OP = * |?Y = (* 3 4) |?Z = 12 | |==> (and (defrel fact | ((fact 0 1)) | ((fact ?x ?y) | ((- ?x 1) ?w) | (fact ?w ?z) | ((* ?z ?x) ?y))) | (fact 10 ?result)) | |?X = ?0 |?Y = ?1 |?W = ?2 |?Z = ?3 |?RESULT = 3628800
KnowledgeWorks and Prolog User Guide (Macintosh version) - 01 Dec 2021 19:35:39