A complete handbook includes the history of the most widely used functional, concurrent, and logic programming languages, including LISP, Scheme, Prolog, and others, to enable the reader to evaluate each and to understand the ways in which each works. (Advanced).
The final volume of the Handbook of Programming Languages series,
Functional, Concurrent and Logic Programming Languages, discusses languages that work with data based on the high-level operations to be performed. This volume interprets what the data mean instead of precisely how to perform the computations. These languages are natural choices for developers of artificial intelligence and knowledge-based applications.
This book opens with a brief general description of Lisp and devotes a chapter to Emacs Lisp. Sections on Scheme, Guile, and CLOS follow.
The volume wraps up with a long chapter on Prolog--a key logic programming language that is highly expressive and useful for knowledge systems and artificial intelligence development. Though knowledge-based applications still make up only a small portion of the overall programming landscape, there's little doubt that they will play an increasingly important role in the future. This volume chronicles the roots of the evolution of knowledge-based applications. --Stephen Plain