Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
--- Richard A. O'Keefe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] Let me contrast SICStus Prolog with GHC. I *have* a personal copy of SICStus on my SunBlade 100/Solaris 2.10 system which installed absolutely trouble free. I *did* have a copy of GHC, but trying to install GHC 6.4 took a great deal of my time and now I don't have a working GHC any more. So for me, GHC is by far the more expensive: I've spent considerably more than 500 Euros of my time and got nothing for it. Much though I admire Jan, I've also had such a lot of trouble installing SWI Prolog on various machines that SICStus was *really* cheaper than the free Prolog after all. I do wish people would remember that not all the world is Linux. Sorry to hear about your troubles with GHC. Have you tried documenting your problems and sending an inquiry to the Glasgow-haskell-bugs mailing list (see http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs)? That mailing list is dedicated to GHC-related bugs, and they tend to be quite responsive. FWIW, I have GHC 6.8.2, which installed trouble-free, running on a Windows XP (Service Pack 2) system at work. I did customize it (after installation) to restore the original banner, but that was a customization, not a bug-fix, and I haven't encountered any bugs per se with it so far. 153 Euros (why did the Europeans name their currency after the Common Wallaroo?) is NZD 303 or about the price of two textbooks. (Three copies of Bird's introduction to functional programming would do it, if they shipped free.) You're telling me that *researchers* can't afford the price of a couple of books? It's more than that, actually, because, in my case, I also want to study it at home on a PPC-based PowerBook running Mac OS X 10.2.8 Jaguar, soon-to-be-upgraded to the PPC version of Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard, soon-to-be-replaced by an Intel-based MacBook Pro running the Intel version of Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard. And this is alongside studying it at work. Granted, SICStus Prolog does appear to be an extremely easy-to-install, fast, well-documented, stable, industrial-grade version of Prolog. It would probably provide an extremely pleasant and rewarding Prolog experience. It is probably well-supported as well. However, the Personal License of SICStus Prolog is only valid for a single computer running a single copy at any one time. So I would actually need to purchase a minimum of two licenses if I used it at both work and home and then went through the trouble of uninstalling each version of SICStus Prolog every time I upgraded my OS at home (which I usually don't do, because it costs already purchased time), and a maximum of four licenses if I chose not to uninstall. Now, 4 * 153 euros = 612 euros which is much more than the price of a couple books. The academic licence isn't that unreasonable. 1560 Euros is NZD 3091, which is about one month of a TA's pay. Another 880 Euros gives you the right to give your students free binaries, however many students you have, year after year after year. Can you recommend an alternative, fast Prolog development system under a free licensing agreement, such as GPL/GLPL? There is, after all, GNU Prolog. The last time I saw any benchmarks, it was substantially faster than SWI, while not quite as good as SICStus. See http://gprolog.inria.fr/ or http://www.gprolog.org/ Yes, GNU Prolog does seem one alternative. Thank you for providing the link. I'll have to compare and contrast it with SICStus Prolog and SWI-Prolog. Although the ease of installation of SICStus Prolog does seem enticing, the need to purchase a new license every time I use a different computer seems a little frightening. What happens if one day, my boss suddenly tells me I'm fired and prohibits access to my work PC for security reasons, thereby preventing me from uninstalling SICStus Prolog at work, and I then need to continue studying it on a different PC at a new job? Wouldn't I need to purchase another Personal License, at another 153 euros? There is no such thing as real job security in the current job market. This could happen without warning at any time, for any reason or even lack of reason. For what it's worth, GNU Prolog's developers *do* realise that not all the world's linux. Yes, but I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, since SWI-Prolog is also available on Windows, and I don't use Linux, either--I use Mac OS X. So who is it that believes that all the world is Linux? Benjamin L. Russell ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
On 28 Mar 2008, at 10:59 pm, Benjamin L. Russell wrote: The commercial SICStus Prolog is also substantially more expensive (see http://www.sics.se/isl/sicstuswww/site/index.html), at 153 euros for a Personal License (see http://www.sics.se/isl/sicstuswww/site/order4.html). Prices for Academic, Single-User Commercial, and Multi-User Commercial licenses are even more expensive, at 1560, 1980, and 7800 euros, respectively. An Evaluation License is only valid for 30 days. Not all students and researchers can afford a Personal License. Let me contrast SICStus Prolog with GHC. I *have* a personal copy of SICStus on my SunBlade 100/Solaris 2.10 system which installed absolutely trouble free. I *did* have a copy of GHC, but trying to install GHC 6.4 took a great deal of my time and now I don't have a working GHC any more. So for me, GHC is by far the more expensive: I've spent considerably more than 500 Euros of my time and got nothing for it. Much though I admire Jan, I've also had such a lot of trouble installing SWI Prolog on various machines that SICStus was *really* cheaper than the free Prolog after all. I do wish people would remember that not all the world is Linux. 153 Euros (why did the Europeans name their currency after the Common Wallaroo?) is NZD 303 or about the price of two textbooks. (Three copies of Bird's introduction to functional programming would do it, if they shipped free.) You're telling me that *researchers* can't afford the price of a couple of books? The academic licence isn't that unreasonable. 1560 Euros is NZD 3091, which is about one month of a TA's pay. Another 880 Euros gives you the right to give your students free binaries, however many students you have, year after year after year. Can you recommend an alternative, fast Prolog development system under a free licensing agreement, such as GPL/GLPL? There is, after all, GNU Prolog. The last time I saw any benchmarks, it was substantially faster than SWI, while not quite as good as SICStus. See http://gprolog.inria.fr/ or http://www.gprolog.org/ For what it's worth, GNU Prolog's developers *do* realise that not all the world's linux. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
--- Richard A. O'Keefe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] The Prolog results at http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ are only for the open source system SWI Prolog, which is basically a one-man effort. The commercial SICStus Prolog is substantially faster. Some of the Prolog benchmark versions look distinctly odd. The commercial SICStus Prolog is also substantially more expensive (see http://www.sics.se/isl/sicstuswww/site/index.html), at 153 euros for a Personal License (see http://www.sics.se/isl/sicstuswww/site/order4.html). Prices for Academic, Single-User Commercial, and Multi-User Commercial licenses are even more expensive, at 1560, 1980, and 7800 euros, respectively. An Evaluation License is only valid for 30 days. Not all students and researchers can afford a Personal License. Can you recommend an alternative, fast Prolog development system under a free licensing agreement, such as GPL/GLPL? Benjamin L. Russell ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
Benjamin L. Russell wrote: Not all students and researchers can afford a Personal License. Can you recommend an alternative, fast Prolog development system under a free licensing agreement, such as GPL/GLPL? For Mac users, https://www.cs.tcd.ie/open-prolog/ might be worth a look ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
Benjamin L. Russell wrote: Not all students and researchers can afford a Personal License. Can you recommend an alternative, fast Prolog development system under a free licensing agreement, such as GPL/GLPL? You have quite a choice if you relax your licensing requirements: http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/prolog.shtml You will find there the GNU-Prolog, whose licensing should be as you wish. Jerzy Karczmarczuk ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
Not all students and researchers can afford a Personal License. Can you recommend an alternative, fast Prolog development system under a free licensing agreement, such as GPL/GLPL? SWI-Prolog is about the best and most popular open Prolog system: http://www.swi-prolog.org It's not the fastest, just like GCC doesn't generates the fastest code. Who cares? If you want speed, then Yap is the best open Prolog system. http://www.ncc.up.pt/~vsc/Yap/ Cheers, Tom -- Tom Schrijvers Department of Computer Science K.U. Leuven Celestijnenlaan 200A B-3001 Heverlee Belgium tel: +32 16 327544 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] url: http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~toms/ ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
This might also be relevant: http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~erwig/zurg/ ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
On 27 Mar 2008, at 8:25 pm, Robert Wills wrote: This might also be relevant: http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~erwig/zurg/ But note that the Prolog code that they compared against was, um, let's put this kindly, seriously naive. For example, (a) it has 36 SLOC.You can do it naturally in 20. (b) it has 8 predicates. You can do it naturally in 4. (c) it does lots of list munching, and that inefficiently. You can do it much more naturally with the only list being the solution. Indeed, a very minor rewrite from the natural code gives you a Prolog program where NO heap storage is allocated except the list of move names. (d) It generates candidate solutions and then rejects ones that take too long. It is easier and more natural to reject over-time paths before extending them to solutions, so the Prolog code they used for comparison is *structurally* inefficient. 30 years ago people were writing papers showing that Lisp was better than very badly written Prolog. Now they are writing papers showing that Haskell is better than very badly written Prolog. How things have changed! NOT. Also note that the paper says The most important feature of Haskell that supports [the impression that Haskell is good at this kind of thing] is the availability of multi-parameter type classes... and that Haskell 98 had no multi-parameter type classes, which are a pretty advanced part of the language for beginners to understand. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
Hi guys I have to build the wumpus world problem. I didn't start yet since this is the first time in my life I have to do something like that and I feel not confident in starting it. So I have basic idea of what prolog and haskell can do and I know a bit of Java. I am wandering if you can tell me which one is best to use to build this problem.Thanks couse I am really confused -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Wumpus-World-tp16310198p16310198.html Sent from the Haskell - Haskell-Cafe mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
iliali16 wrote: Hi guys I have to build the wumpus world problem. I didn't start yet since this is the first time in my life I have to do something like that and I feel not confident in starting it. So I have basic idea of what prolog and haskell can do and I know a bit of Java. I am wandering if you can tell me which one is best to use to build this problem.Thanks couse I am really confused This sounds like a homework problem. Any of those languages will do. Of course Haskell will be shorter. Jump in, get started. The way to solve a problem you don't understand is to do any bit of it you do understand, and then look at the problem again. Paul. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
After briefly searching the Internet and coming up with a page entitled CIS587: The Wumpus World (http://www.cis.temple.edu/~ingargio/cis587/readings/wumpus.shtml), I think that since the statement of this problem there, involving the Situation Calculus, chiefly involves a sequence of logical statements with truth values and the relations between the statements, the statements there could perhaps initially be more directly applied with Prolog than with Haskell. However, note that it has been demonstrated in the following book that it is possible to consider logic programming as a natural extension of functional programming as well (although this book is on Scheme, the concepts can be extended to Haskell as well): * Daniel P. Friedman, William E. Byrd and Oleg Kiselyov. _The Reasoned Schemer._ Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, July 2005. ISBN-10: 0-262-56214-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-262-56214-0 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2tid=10663 I would suggest that you read about both Prolog and Haskell, take a look at the above book (after first looking at its prerequisite, _The Little Schemer_), and then compare whether you would prefer more directly applying Prolog or using the above book and extending it to apply Haskell. Also, you may wish to keep in mind the following differences between Haskell and Prolog: * Prolog is initially better suited to representing knowledge originally represented as a sequence of logic statements and the relations among them * Haskell is well-suited to writing programs that can be expressed as mathematical functions, and incorporates lazy evaluation, which allows delaying the evaluation of an argument until evaluation is required * Haskell code tends to be more succinct (as Paul Johnson mentioned) * Haskell code tends to run faster, and can often be optimized to run at a speed on par with OCaml * Prolog tends to be one of the slowest-running programming languages I would also suggest that you take a look at the HaskellWiki (http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell), and in particular, at the following example related to logic programming: * HaskellWiki Logic programming example: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Logic_programming_example Compare this example to examples of Prolog code, and see which one suits your taste. Lastly, when learning Haskell, please try to learn from books, not tutorials. Haskell has a very steep learning curve, and is very difficult to cover adequately in a short tutorial. In particular, I recommend the following titles: * Hudak, Paul. _The Haskell School of Expression._ New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. http://www.haskell.org/soe/ (Just make sure that you review your trigonometry before reading this book, because some of the exercises in it assume knowledge of trigonometry. I found this book extremely interesting, but discovered that it does assume some domain knowledge in that area.) * Kees Doets and Jan van Eijck. _The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming._ College Publications, April 2004. http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/ A book that uses Haskell as a tool for learning about logic and mathematics. Nevertheless, the book is highly readable, and does a good job of introducing Haskell. It also assumes less domain knowledge than the above book. (Write to me personally if you want more information about this book.) Good luck! Benjamin L. Russell --- Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: iliali16 wrote: Hi guys I have to build the wumpus world problem. I didn't start yet since this is the first time in my life I have to do something like that and I feel not confident in starting it. So I have basic idea of what prolog and haskell can do and I know a bit of Java. I am wandering if you can tell me which one is best to use to build this problem.Thanks couse I am really confused This sounds like a homework problem. Any of those languages will do. Of course Haskell will be shorter. Jump in, get started. The way to solve a problem you don't understand is to do any bit of it you do understand, and then look at the problem again. Paul. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Wumpus World
On 27 Mar 2008, at 4:23 pm, Benjamin L. Russell wrote: After briefly searching the Internet and coming up with a page entitled CIS587: The Wumpus World (http://www.cis.temple.edu/~ingargio/cis587/readings/wumpus.shtml), I think that since the statement of this problem there, involving the Situation Calculus, chiefly involves a sequence of logical statements with truth values and the relations between the statements, the statements there could perhaps initially be more directly applied with Prolog than with Haskell. A solution to the problem is a sequence of actions. In Prolog, action(right). action(left). action(forward). action(shoot). action(grab). action(release). action(climb). solution(Actions) :- initial_state(State0), length(Actions, _), fill_in(Actions, State0). fill_in([], State) :- final_state(State). fill_in([Action|Actions], State0) :- action(Action), effect(Action, State0, State1), fill_in(Actions, State1). Now all that's left is to implement effect(Action, State0, State1), which means (known) action Action can be carried out in (known) state State0 and results in state State1. By inspection, we can see that [forward,left,forward,forward,grab,left,shoot, left,forward,forward,right,forward,climb] will solve the problem, so we must search to a depth of 13, and have 7 actions to choose from, so a blind iterative-deepening search like this must check on the order of 1.1x10**11 states. Also, you may wish to keep in mind the following differences between Haskell and Prolog: [snip] * Haskell code tends to be more succinct (as Paul Johnson mentioned) Not really an issue for this problem. * Haskell code tends to run faster, and can often be optimized to run at a speed on par with OCaml * Prolog tends to be one of the slowest-running programming languages That largely depends on which compiler you use and what coding style you follow. I've known Prolog code outperform published Fortran for the same problem, thanks to using a better algorithm that was easy to express in Prolog and practically impossible in Fortran 77. The Prolog results at http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ are only for the open source system SWI Prolog, which is basically a one-man effort. The commercial SICStus Prolog is substantially faster. Some of the Prolog benchmark versions look distinctly odd. It is certainly true that Prolog can be slow *if* you try to write conventional imperative code in it, which many people do. But then, conventional imperative code isn't the best way to use Haskell either. Prolog's strongly-typed-and-moded brother, Mercury, gives you a combination of - logic programming - strict functional programming - Haskell-like typeclasses which makes it a candidate. However, checking 1.1x10**11 states is going to take a while no matter *what* language you use. Looking at the problem again, we see that if you can get the gold and shoot the wumpus, then you can certainly get out again by retracing your steps, because the pits do not move around. So in the solution [forward,left,forward,forward,grab,left,shoot, left,forward,forward,right,forward,climb] the second line consists of steps that are entirely predictable from the first. So we *really* only have to search to a depth of 7, checking 9.5x10**5 states. That's a speedup of 117649, which is much more than you are going to get from ANY programming language. I should point out that Prolog is not well suited to *directly* expressing rules like Smelly(l1) = (EXISTS l2 At(Wumpus,l2,s) (l2=l1 OR Adjacent(l1,l2))) This is going to require some programming. Something that might be rather fun would be feeding the Wumpus World axioms to the free theorem prover OTTER, which is quite impressive. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
