CIS587: CLIPS, a Language Integrated Production System

Last Modified:

General Information

Clips is a very good and popular Production System created at the University of Georgia for NASA.
Here is information on Clips in the CMU AI Repository.
Some of the same information is available locally on our system including executables for Clips and Xclips (Clips with an X-windows based GUI). The paths on yoda.cis.temple.edu are:

/home/yoda/ugai/board/clips6/executables/sun4/clips

/home/yoda/ugai/board/clips6/executables/sun4/xclips

You can also execute Xclips remotely using Mosaic.

Very good documentation is available for Clips, together with many examples.
A good book on Expert Systems using Clips is

Giarratano,J.,Riley,G.: Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, 2nd Edition, PWS Publishing, 1994

Below is information of a few basic commands.

CLIPS COMMANDS (CLIPS is case sensitive)
========================================

(run [< number-of-steps>]; Run the specified number of steps 

(exit)		; Terminate execution and, possibly, return a value

(reset)		; The facts list is emptied, then default are taken
		; The usual way of executing things in CLIPS is to
		; first load the filename.clp, then doing (reset), 
		; and finally (run)

(clear)		; It removes all constructs from the clips environment

(load )		; Loads the specified file.

(save )		; Saves the current constructs to the specified file

(system ) 	; It executes the specified command in the shell.

(dribble-on []) ; send all io info to specified file

(dribble-off)	; Undoes effect of last load operation

(watch )	; Receive statistics about the specified items.
		; The  can be all, activations, compilations,
		; facts, focus, rules, statistics

(deffacts  *)

(defrule  * => *)

(deftemplate  )

(undefrule )

(undeftemplate )

(rules)		; Lists the names of currently defined rules

(facts)		; Lists the currently defined facts

(agenda)	; Lists the current content of the agenda

(list-defrules)	; Lists the names of the current defrules

(list-deffacts)	; Lists the names of the deffacts

(list-deftemplates) ; Lists the names of the deftemplates

(ppdefrule ) ; Pretty print the specified rule

(ppdeftemplate ) ; Pretty print the specified template

(ppdeffacts ) ; Pretty print the specified deffact

(assert )	; Add the specified fact

(retract )	; Removes the specified fact