logict
A backtracking logic-programming monad.
https://github.com/Bodigrim/logict#readme
Version on this page: | 0.7.1.0 |
LTS Haskell 22.40: | 0.8.1.0@rev:1 |
Stackage Nightly 2024-11-06: | 0.8.1.0@rev:1 |
Latest on Hackage: | 0.8.1.0@rev:1 |
logict-0.7.1.0@sha256:e3c96033c5baf50eb61d65a22fad1809ffca29809345ad887d51ea6e570a141f,1641
Module documentation for 0.7.1.0
- Control
- Control.Monad
logict
Provides support for logic-based evaluation. Logic-based programming uses a technique known as backtracking to consider alternative values as solutions to logic statements, and is exemplified by languages such as Prolog and Datalog.
Logic-based programming replaces explicit iteration and sequencing code with implicit functionality that internally “iterates” (via backtracking) over a set of possible values that satisfy explicitly provided conditions.
This package adds support for logic-based programming in Haskell using
the continuation-based techniques adapted from the paper
Backtracking, Interleaving, and Terminating Monad Transformers
by Oleg Kiselyov, Chung-chieh Shan, Daniel P. Friedman, Amr Sabry.
This paper extends previous research into using MonadPlus
functionality—where mplus
is used to specify value alternatives
for consideration and mzero
use used to specify the lack of any
acceptable values—to add support for fairness and pruning using a
set of operations defined by a new MonadLogic
class.
Background
In a typical example for Prolog logic programming, there are a set of facts (expressed as unconditional statements):
parent(sarah, john).
parent(arnold, john).
parent(john, anne).
and a set of rules that apply if their conditions (body clause) are satisfied:
grandparent(Person, Grandchild) :- parent(Person, X), parent(X, Grandchild).
Execution of a query for this rule grandparent(G, anne)
would result in the following “values”:
grandparent(sarah, anne).
grandparent(arnold, anne).
For this query execution, Person
and X
are “free” variables where
Grandchild
has been fixed to anne
. The Prolog engine internally
“backtracks” to the parent(Person, X)
statement to try different
known values for each variable, executing forward to see if the values
satisfy all the results and produce a resulting value.
Haskell logict Package
The Haskell equivalent for the example above, using the logict
package
might look something like the following:
import Control.Applicative
import Control.Monad.Logic
parents :: [ (String, String) ]
parents = [ ("Sarah", "John")
, ("Arnold", "John")
, ("John", "Anne")
]
grandparent :: String -> Logic String
grandparent grandchild = do (p, c) <- choose parents
(c', g) <- choose parents
guard (c == c')
guard (g == grandchild)
pure p
choose = foldr ((<|>) . pure) empty
main = do let grandparents = observeAll (grandparent "Anne")
putStrLn $ "Anne's grandparents are: " <> show grandparents
In this simple example, each of the choose
calls acts as a
backtracking choice point where different entries of the parents
array will be generated. This backtracking is handled automatically
by the MonadLogic
instance for Logic
and does not need to be
explicitly written into the code. The observeAll
function collects
all the values “produced” by Logic
, allowing this program to
display:
Anne's grandparents are: ["Sarah","Arnold"]
This example is provided as the grandparents
executable built by the
logict
package so you can run it yourself and try various
experimental modifications.
The example above is very simplistic and is just a brief introduction
into the capabilities of logic programming and the logict
package.
The logict
package provides additional functionality such as:
-
Fair conjunction and disjunction, which can help with potentially infinite sets of inputs.
-
A
LogicT
monad stack that lets logic operations be performed along with other monadic actions (e.g. if the parents sample was streamed from an input file using theIO
monad). -
A
MonadLogic
class which allows other monads to be defined which provide logic programming capabilities.
Additional Notes
The implementation in this logict
package provides the backtracking
functionality at a lower level than that defined in the associated
paper. The backtracking is defined within the Alternative
class as
<|>
and empty
, whereas the paper uses the MonadPlus
class and
the mplus
and mzero
functions; since Alternative
is a
requirement (constraint) for MonadPlus
, this allows both
nomenclatures to be supported and used as appropriate to the client
code.
More details on using this package as well as other functions (including fair conjunction and disjunction) are provided in the Haddock documentation.
Changes
0.7.1.0
- Improve documentation.
- Relax superclasses of
MonadLogic
toMonad
andAlternative
instead ofMonadPlus
.
0.7.0.3
- Support GHC 9.0.
0.7.0.2
- Add
Safe
pragmas.
0.7.0.1
- Fix
MonadReader r (LogicT m)
instance again.
0.7.0.0
- Remove unlawful
MonadLogic (Writer T w m)
instances. - Fix
MonadReader r (LogicT m)
instance. - Move
lnot
intoMonadLogic
class.
0.6.0.3
- Comply with MonadFail proposal.