Language
The ECLiPSe language is largely backward-compatible with Prolog and supports different dialects. Thanks to its declarative nature, it can be used both as a modelling language for the description of problems and as a general purpose programming language.
Beyond the basic Prolog data types, the following are available: strings, unlimited precision integer and rational numbers, and floating point intervals. Array syntax and structures with field names are also supported and especially useful in constraint modelling.
A logical iteration construct eliminates the need for most simple recursion patterns.
ECLiPSe provides comprehensive facilities to implement data-driven control behaviour. These include declarative delay-clauses as well as primitives for meta-programmed control like explicit goal suspension, flexible triggering facilities and execution priorities. Together with the attributed variable data type, this is the key to many extensions to the basic logic programming language, including all constraint-based functionality. The system calls user-definable event handlers when it encounters attributed variables in certain contexts, e.g. unification.
The module system controls the visibility of predicates, non-logical stores, source transformations and syntax settings. Module interfaces can be extended and restricted, and modules written in different language dialects can be mixed within one application.
Programs may contain structured comments from which reference documentation can be generated.
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—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
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“Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)