Algernon Tutorial 1.e
Success and Failure of Clauses and Paths

Paths

• A path will return a result only if it succeeds.
• A path succeeds if any of its branches succeed.
• For a branch to succeed, all of its clauses must succeed.

Queries (non-ground clauses)

• A query will succeed if it is syntactically correct and if it can retrieve at least one value.
• Algernon macros sometimes do not correspond to a simple query. However, the documentation for each macro specifies when it will succeed or fail.

Asserts (ground clauses)

• A ground clause succeeds if it either verifies that the value is already in the KB or if it succeeds in storing the value in the KB.