Yes, I was discarding the imperative features. It always struck me as odd how purists adore Prolog for its conceptual clarity, but then as soon as you want to

Yes, I was discarding the imperative features. It always struck me as odd how purists adore Prolog for its conceptual clarity, but then as soon as you want to write anything nontrivial in it, they come and tell you to place "cuts" everywhere, exposing the imperative execution order throughout the program. IMHO this is evidence of Prolog being a failure.