Altering and applying predicates

Abstract

A set of tools in Prolog for manipulating predicates as first-class objects is described. These tools are higher-level tools than assert, retract and querying. The first group of these tools are analogs to the Lisp tools apply, function, lambda, and programming cliches such as mapcar. The second group of tools is for editing and manipulating predicates. Prolog provides a simpler structure for predicates than Lisp has for functions and thus a small set of tools for adding to, retrieving from, removing from, replacing to, and exchanging within predicates can be provided for Prolog predicates but not for Lisp functions.