Unofficial binaries to download here https://github.com/mingodad/picat/actions/runs/7017047420#artifacts
Picat is a simple, and yet powerful, logic-based multi-paradigm programming language aimed for general-purpose applications. Picat is a rule-based language, in which predicates, functions, and actors are defined with pattern-matching rules. Picat incorporates many declarative language features for better productivity of software development, including explicit non-determinism, explicit unification, functions, list comprehensions, constraints, and tabling. Picat also provides imperative language constructs, such as assignments and loops, for programming everyday things. The Picat implementation, which is based on a well-designed virtual machine and incorporates a memory manager that garbage-collects and expands the stacks and data areas when needed, is efficient and scalable. Picat can be used for not only symbolic computations, which is a traditional application domain of declarative languages, but also for scripting and modeling tasks.
Compared with functional and scripting languages, the support of explicit unification, explicit non-determinism, tabling, and constraints makes Picat more suitable for symbolic computations. Compared with Prolog, Picat is arguably more expressive and scalable: it is not rare to find problems for which Picat requires an order of magnitude fewer lines of code to describe than Prolog and Picat can be significantly faster than Prolog because pattern-matching facilitates indexing of rules.
The Picat system is written in both C and Picat. The package has the following folders and files:
Picat/README -- this file Picat/picat -- the executable (picat.exe for Windows) Picat/doc -- documentation Picat/exs -- program examples Picat/emu -- the C/C++ source code of the engine Picat/lib -- library modules
The folder "Picat/emu" contains the C source code needed to make Picat's standalone executable. It also contains the C source code of Espresso, SAT solvers (maple and lingeling), which are used by Picat. This folder also contains make files for different platforms.
The folder "Picat/lib" contains library modules. There are three types of library modules:
The symbols defined in this type of modules are directly available to applications, and it's unnecessary to import them. This type includes: "basic.pi", "io.pi", "math.pi", and "sys.pi".
These modules are included in the executable. However, applications need to import them in order to access the functions, predicates, and constraints defined in the modules. No setting of the environment variable PICATPATH is required. This type includes: "cp.pi", "mip.pi", "nn.pi", "os.pi", "planner.pi", "sat.pi", "smt.pi", and "util.pi".
These modules, which are mainly developed by third parties, are not included in the executable. In order to import any of these modules, applications must set the environment variable PICATPATH to include the folder, in which the module resides, or start picat with the option "-path" set.
This Picat system is distributed under the Mozilla Public License (http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/). The Picat system is provided free of charge for any fair application, including commercial applications.
Please contact: [email protected] [email protected]