I am writing Sudoku. It has been a long time since I touched the prologue, so I do not remember everything about unification, retreat, etc. I think I am forcing the system to retreat forever (but I am not getting stack exceptions - at least not immediately). This is what I still have (the puzzle can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sudoku-by-L2G-20050714.svg ):
% representation of the example puzzle
puzzle([5, 3, _, _, 7, _, _, _, _],
[6, _, _, 1, 9, 5, _, _, _],
[_, 9, 8, _, _, _, _, 6, _],
[8, _, _, _, 6, _, _, _, 3],
[4, _, _, 8, _, 3, _, _, 1],
[7, _, _, _, 2, _, _, _, 6],
[_, 6, _, _, _, _, 2, 8, _],
[_, _, _, 4, 1, 9, _, _, 5],
[_, _, _, _, 8, _, _, 7, 9]).
% solve(S)
% the starting point of the program
% saves the solution in the variable S
solve(R1, R2, C1) :-
% save the rows into variables
puzzle(R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6, R7, R8, R9),
% solve for each row
allunique(R1), allunique(R2), allunique(R3),
allunique(R4), allunique(R5), allunique(R6),
allunique(R7), allunique(R8), allunique(R9),
% the columns must be created first
nelement(R1, 1, C11), nelement(R2, 1, C21), nelement(R3, 1, C31),
nelement(R4, 1, C41), nelement(R5, 1, C51), nelement(R6, 1, C61),
nelement(R7, 1, C71), nelement(R8, 1, C81), nelement(R9, 1, C91),
C1 = [C11, C21, C31, C41, C51, C61, C71, C81, C91],
allunique(C1).
% allunique(List)
% Succeeds if all the numbers of List are between 1-9
% and each number exists only once
allunique([]). % Recursion stops when the list is empty
% A member should be between 1-9 and not a member of the tail
allunique([H|T]) :-
allunique(T),
member(H, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]),
not(member(H, T)).
% nelement(List, N-th, X)
% Saves the nth element of a list in variable X
nelement([H|_], 1, H). % The first element is the head
% All other elements will be found in the tail
nelement([_|T], N, X) :-
N > 1,
N1 is N-1,
nelement(T, N1, X).
The line allunique(C1)is causing the problem. It seems that the system puts 7 in the first empty box of the 1st column and never changes it (or, at least, not in the near future). List example C1 - [5, 6, 7, 8, 4, 7, 9, 8, 6]. I am curious to know why this is happening.