Publication

Abstract : While designing programming environments, one should consider a very easily understandable way to explain it to the user how their program works. For a programmer who migrates from a procedure oriented language to a logic programming language like Prolog, it is difficult to understand the search strategy used while it derives new information from the existing knowledge base. But for a Prolog programmer it is essential to understand how the unification and searching process are done in order to write and debug programs. Here, a tool which can graphically show the order in which Prolog searches and backtracks for the answer of a particular query is presented. To understand the program execution, a model of the programming language is essential. For that, the model should include some information about the search space, the flow of control through the search space and the Prolog clauses. The proposed system will be helpful for the teaching purpose. The graphical representation of these Prolog trace is very much helpful for the learner to understand how the query has been traced from the whole knowledge base. Instead of showing only the correct path, the system could show failed paths also. It is mainly intended to make the students understand, how the Prolog trace works. © International Science Press.