The Logic Programming Tutor

The Logic Programming Tutor (LPT) assumes no prior knowledge or experience of Prolog. The book is designed as a teaching tool to be used in conjunction with a computer program of the same name which is offered free of charge on disk. The LPT is essentially a user friendly front-end that can accept either Prolog or an English-like notation, and translate between one and the other. There is a built-in editor which can display sections from one of several `scripts' written by an instructor; these guide the student in learning Prolog by experimentation. The book is divided into two parts. Part I describes in detail how the Tutor works, and finishes with a complete listing of the source code. Because the Tutor's editor and the script handler are independent of the programming language it accepts, it will be of interest not only to teachers of Prolog, but also to those teaching other logic-based languages built on it -- for example, frame-based or object-oriented languages. Part II contains the scripts and supplementary exercises used with the LPT at Oxford University. Each script is accompanied by notes to the teacher, giving answers to exercises, and indicating problems and misconceptions that students have experienced.