Expert Systems/CLIPS

About CLIPS
CLIPS is a public-domain software tool for building expert systems. The name is an acronym for "C Language Integrated Production System." The syntax and name was inspired by Charles Forgy's OPS. The first versions of CLIPS were developed starting in 1985 at NASA-Johnson Space Center until the mid 1990s when the development group's responsibilities ceased to focus on expert system technology.

CLIPS is probably the most widely used expert system tool because it is fast, efficient and free. Although it is now in the public domain, it is still updated and supported by the original author, Gary Riley. CLIPS incorporates a complete object-oriented language "COOL" for writing expert systems. Though it is written in C, its interface more closely resembles that of the programming language LISP. Extensions can be written in C, and CLIPS can be called from C.

Like other expert system languages, CLIPS deals with rules and facts. Various facts can make a rule applicable. An applicable rule is then asserted. Facts and rules are created by first defining them, as shown below:

Descendants of the CLIPS language include Jess, Haley Eclipse (of Haley Systems -> RuleBurst ->Oracle), FuzzyCLIPS, EHSIS, and others.