Re: [eclipse-clp-users] Assignment of a value to an element of an array

On 03/05/2013 05:44, Sergii Dymchenko wrote:
...
>
> Maybe there are some complicated reasons why working syntax is "7 is A[1]" and not "A[1] is 7"?
> Maybe it's not too hard to make "A[1] is 7" work in future ECLiPSe releases?

The is/2 predicate is not symmetric.  It accepts and evaluates expressions on its
right hand side only, and unifies the result with the (unevaluated) left hand side.

The array subscript notation A[1] is considered an expression, and is therefore
only evaluated when it occurs on the right hand side.  In other words, the reason
for "A[1] is 7" not working is the same as for "3+4 is 7" not working.

It is probably not a good idea to modify the rather clean definition of is/2.
If you use constraints anyway, why not use #=/2 (as you said).  Alternatively,
define your own "assignment" operator:

:- op(700, xfx, :=).
subscript(A,I) := X  :-  subscript(A, I, X).


?- dim(A,[3]), A[3] := 7.
A = [](_328, _329, 7)
Yes (0.00s cpu)


-- Joachim