How does the power function work - prolog

Question

This is My First Logic Programming Language course so this is a really Dumb Question But I cannot for the life of me figure out how does this power predicate work I've tried making a search tree to trace it But I still cannot understand how is it working
mult(_ , 0 ,0).
mult(X , Y, Z):-
Y > 0,
Y1 is Y - 1,
mult(X,Y1,Z1),
Z is Z1 + X.
exp2(_ ,0 , 1).
exp2(X,Y,Z):-
Y > 0,
Y1 is Y - 1,
exp2(X , Y1 , Z1),
mult(X,Z1,Z).
I so far get that I'm going to call the exp2 predicate till I reach the point where the Y is going to be Zero then I'm going to start multiplying from there, but At the last call when it's at exp2(2 , 1 , Z) what is the Z value and how does the predicate work from there?
Thank you very much =)
EDIT: I'm really sorry for the Late reply I had some problems and couldn't access my PC

Answer 1

I'll walk through mult/3 in more detail here, but I'll leave exp2/3 to you as an exercise. It's similar..
As I mentioned in my comment, you want to read a Prolog predicate as a rule.
mult(_ , 0 ,0).
This rule says 0 is the result of multiplying anything (_) by 0. The variable _ is an anonymous variable, meaning it is not only a variable, but you don't care what its value is.
mult(X, Y, Z) :-
This says, Z is the result of multiplying X by Y if....
Y > 0,
Establish that Y is greater than 0.
Y1 is Y - 1,
And that Y1 has the value of Y minus 1.
mult(X, Y1, Z1),
And that Z1 is the result of multiplying X by Y1.
Z is Z1 + X.
And Z is the value of Z1 plus X.
Or reading the mult(X, Y, Z) rule altogether:
Z is the result of multiplying X by Y if Y is greater than 0, and Y1 is Y-1, and Z1 is the result of multiplying X by Y1, and Z is the result of adding Z1 to X.
Now digging a little deeper, you can see this is a recursive definition, as in the multiplication of two numbers is being defined by another multiplication. But what is being multiplied is important. Mathematically, it's using the fact that x * y is equal to x * (y - 1) + x. So it keeps reducing the second multiplicand by 1 and calling itself on the slightly reduced problem. When does this recursive reduction finally end? Well, as shown above, the second rule says Y must be greater than 0. If Y is 0, then the first rule, mult(_, 0, 0) applies and the recursion finally comes back with a 0.
If you are not sure how recursion works or are unfamiliar with it, I highly recommend Googling it to understand it. That is, indeed, a concept that applies to many computer languages. But you need to be careful about learning Prolog via comparison with other languages. Prolog is fundamentally different in it's behavior from procedural/imperative languages like Java, Python, C, C++, etc. It's best to get used to interpreting Prolog rules and facts as I have described above.

Answer 2

Say you want to compute 2^3 as assign result to R.
For that you will call exp2(2, 3, R).
It will recursively call exp2(2, 2, R1) and then exp2(2, 1, R2) and finally exp(2, 0, R3).
At this point exp(_, 0, 1) will match and R3 will be assigned to 1.
Then when call stack unfolds 1 will be multiplied by 2 three times.
In Java this logic would be encoded as follows. Execution would go pretty much the same route.
public static int Exp2(int X, int Y) {
if (Y == 0) { // exp2(_, 0, 1).
return 1;
}
if (Y > 0) { // Y > 0
int Y1 = Y - 1; // Y1 is Y - 1
int Z1 = Exp2(X, Y1); // exp2(X, Y1, Z1);
return X * Z1; // mult(X, Z1, Z).
}
return -1; // this should never happen.
}