Adventures in
Rule‑Based Programming

A CLIPS Tutorial

Adventures in Rule‑Based Programming is a fun introduction to writing applications using CLIPS, a popular rule‑based programming language written in C. Originally developed at NASA, CLIPS has been in use for over thirty‑five years. CLIPS and the CLIPS source code are available for free.

In this tutorial you’ll learn the basic concepts of rule‑based programming, where rules are used to specify the logic of what must be accomplished, but an inference engine determines when rules are applied. You’ll incrementally create a fully functional text adventure game, and in the process, learn how to write, organize, debug, test, and deploy CLIPS code.

About the Author

Gary Riley was a member of the CLIPS development team while working for NASA at the Johnson Space Space Center from 1985 to 1996. Since leaving NASA, he has continued developing and maintaining CLIPS as public domain software.