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Date:      Fri, 10 Dec 1999 04:41:38 +0100
From:      Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com>
To:        Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Cc:        David Scheidt <dscheidt@enteract.com>, Tani Hosokawa <unknown@riverstyx.net>, Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>, Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>, Kris Kennaway <kris@hub.freebsd.org>, freebsd-chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Yahoo hacked last night
Message-ID:  <38507672.25B7FB4F@nisser.com>
References:  <38502053.28737F7B@nisser.com> <4.2.0.58.19991209162117.00cc0670@localhost> <4.2.0.58.19991209200536.03b8b400@localhost>

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Brett Glass wrote:
> 
> If it's allowed to run to completion it will do a complete depth-first
> search and generate all possible solutions -- provided, of course, that
> the tree is finite.

And not all trees are. And there are those that recurse before the
path with the solution(s) is taken. Breadth first would solve that.

> ...

> Backward chaining is the mechanism of formal logic which Prolog
> implements. It tries to "chain" backward from a statement to the
> facts and rules which prove it to be true.

Still doesn't ring a bell. The process is known as SLD-resolution
being a refinement of SL-resolution. The logic texts still await
reading but from what I picked up from regular texts I gather it
is not unlike Robinsons' unification algorithm. The very algorithm
used in type inference. In fact, from what I recall - we're talking
very early 80's here, after all - some Prolog's are more or less
based on that algorithm. There was an early text floating around
from Leuven University or something describing how to roll your
own Prolog. I was at the time doing an inference engine in Pascal/MT+
for 8 bit CP/M <g>.

> However, it still has some niceties that Icon doesn't. Regular
> expressions as implemented in Perl are far less potent than
> SNOBOL patterns. (The original SNOBOL book contains a
> complete parser for the SNOBOL language in SNOBOL; the set
> of patterns is only about 20 lines long.

Sorry, but that's even longer ago <g>. All I had at the time was
some text print out from the CDC Cyber implementation. Later on
I looked at it again, but in a cursory fashion. But one wonders
whether SNOBOL's conciseness had something to do with it <g>. From
what I remember it gave APL a run for its money.

Roelof

-- 
Home is where the (@) http://eboa.com/ is.
Telekabel home http://nisser.com/


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