prolog-cut-negation

What problem does it solve?

Prolog control flow can be hard to reason about due to nondeterminism and the interaction of cut, negation, and conditional constructs. This section guides developers to understand how and when to use cutting, negation-as-failure, and if-then-else to write efficient and correct predicates, improving determinism and backtracking behavior.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Green cut vs red cut: distinguishes when a cut can be safely dropped without changing answers versus when it enforces a required ordering.
• If-Then-Else semantics: explains ( Condition -> Then ; Else ) structure and its scoping behavior.
• Negation-as-Failure: shows safe usage of + with ground terms and the open-world limitations.
• once/1 pattern: demonstrates how to commit to a single solution.
• Practical patterns: guard patterns, deterministic lookups, and common control-flow recipes.

Quick Start

Define a simple max/3 using a cut to lock in the first solution and test different inputs.