Declarative Programming
Subject Notes for Semester 2, 2020
Prolog
s e a r ch b s t ( node (K, V, , ) , K, V) .
s e a r ch b s t ( node (K, , L , ) , SK, SV) :?
SK @< K,
s e a r ch b s t (L , SK, SV) .
s e a r ch b s t ( node (K, , , R) , SK, SV) :?
SK @> K,
s e a r ch b s t (R, SK, SV) .
Haskell
s e a r ch b s t : : Tree k v ?> k ?> Maybe v
s e a r ch b s t Leaf = Nothing
s e a r ch b s t (Node k v l r ) sk =
i f sk == k then
Just v
else i f sk < k then
s e a r ch b s t l sk
else
s e a r ch b s t r sk
School of Computing and Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
Copyright c? 2020 The University of Melbourne
A language that doesn’t affect the way you think
about programming, is not worth knowing.
— Alan Perlis
Section 0:
Subject Introduction
Welcome to Declarative Programming
Lecturer: Peter Schachte
Contact information is available from the LMS.
There will be two pre-recorded one-hour lectures
per week, plus one live one-hour practical meeting
for questions, discussion, and demonstrations.
There will be eleven one-hour workshops (labs),
starting in week 2.
You should have already been allocated a workshop.
Please check your personal timetable after the lec-
ture.
– section 0 slide 1 –
Grok
We use Grok to provide added self-paced instruc-
tional material, exercises, and self-assessment for
both Haskell and Prolog.
You can access Grok by following the link from the
subject LMS page.
If you are unable to access Grok or find that it is
not working correctly, please email
Grok University Support
~~~~
from your university email account and explain the
problem.
If you have questions regarding the Grok lessons or
exercises, please post a message to the subject LMS
discussion forum.
– section 0 slide 2 –
Workshops
The workshops will reinforce the material from lec-
tures, partly by asking you to apply it to small scale
programming tasks.
To get the most out of each workshop, you should
read and attempt the exercises before your work-
shop. You are encouraged to ask questions, discuss,
and actively engage in workshops. The more you
put into workshops, the more you will get out of
them.
Workshop exerciese will be available through Grok,
so they can be undertaken even if you are not
present in Australia. Sample solutions for each set
of workshop exercises will also be available through
Grok.
Most programming questions have more than one
correct answer; your answer may be correct even if
it differs from the sample solution.
NOTE If your laptop can access the building’s wire-
less network, you will be able to log onto the MSE
servers and use their installed versions of this sub-
ject’s languages, Haskell and Prolog. If your lap-
top cannot access the building’s wireless network,
then you will be able to test your Haskell or Pro-
log code if you install the implementations of those
languages on your machine yourself. For both lan-
guages this is typically fast and simple.
– section 0 slide 3 –
Resources
The lecture notes contain copies of the slides pre-
sented in lectures, plus some additional material.
All subject materials (lecture notes, workshop ex-
ercises, project specifications etc) will be available
online through the LMS.
The recommended text is
? Bryan O’Sullivan, John Goerzen and Don
Stewart: Real world Haskell. O’Reilly Media,
2009. ISBN 978-0-596-51498-3. Available on-
line at http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read.
Other recommended resources are listed on the