Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 SWI-Prolog
    • 1.1.1 Books about Prolog
  • 1.2 Status
  • 1.3 Compliance to the ISO standard
  • 1.4 Should you be using SWI-Prolog?
  • 1.5 The XPCE GUI system for Prolog
  • 1.6 Release Notes
    • 1.6.1 Version 1.8 Release Notes
    • 1.6.2 Version 1.9 Release Notes
    • 1.6.3 Version 2.0 Release Notes
    • 1.6.4 Version 2.5 Release Notes
    • 1.6.5 Version 2.6 Release Notes
    • 1.6.6 Version 2.7 Release Notes
    • 1.6.7 Version 2.8 Release Notes
    • 1.6.8 Version 2.9 Release Notes
    • 1.6.9 Version 3.0 Release Notes
    • 1.6.10 Version 3.1 Release Notes
    • 1.6.11 Version 3.3 Release Notes
      • 1.6.11.1 Incompatible changes
    • 1.6.12 Version 3.4 Release Notes
    • 1.6.13 Version 4.0 Release Notes
    • 1.6.14 Version 5.0 Release Notes
    • 1.6.15 Version 5.1 Release Notes
    • 1.6.16 Version 5.2 Release Notes
  • 1.7 Donate to the SWI-Prolog project
  • 1.8 Acknowledgements
• 2 Overview
  • 2.1 Getting started quickly
    • 2.1.1 Starting SWI-Prolog
      • 2.1.1.1 Starting SWI-Prolog on Unix
      • 2.1.1.2 Starting SWI-Prolog on Windows
    • 2.1.2 Executing a query
  • 2.2 The user's initialisation file
  • 2.3 Initialisation files and goals
  • 2.4 Command line options
  • 2.5 GNU Emacs Interface
  • 2.6 Online Help
  • 2.7 Query Substitutions
    • 2.7.1 Limitations of the History System
  • 2.8 Reuse of toplevel bindings
  • 2.9 Overview of the Debugger
  • 2.10 Compilation
    • 2.10.1 During program development
    • 2.10.2 For running the result
      • 2.10.2.1 Using PrologScript
      • 2.10.2.2 Creating a shell-script
      • 2.10.2.3 Creating a saved-state
      • 2.10.2.4 Compilation using the -c commandline option
  • 2.11 Environment Control (Prolog flags)
  • 2.12 An overview of hook predicates
  • 2.13 Automatic loading of libraries
  • 2.14 Garbage Collection
  • 2.15 Syntax Notes
    • 2.15.1 ISO Syntax Support
      • 2.15.1.1 Character Escape Syntax
      • 2.15.1.2 Syntax for non-decimal numbers
  • 2.16 System limits
    • 2.16.1 Limits on memory areas
      • 2.16.1.1 The heap
    • 2.16.2 Other Limits
    • 2.16.3 Reserved Names
• 3 Initialising and Managing a Prolog Project
  • 3.1 The project source-files
    • 3.1.1 File Names and Locations
      • 3.1.1.1 File Name Extensions
      • 3.1.1.2 Project Directories
      • 3.1.1.3 Sub-projects using search-paths
    • 3.1.2 Project Special Files
  • 3.2 Using modules
  • 3.3 The test-edit-reload cycle
    • 3.3.1 Locating things to edit
    • 3.3.2 Editing and incremental compilation
  • 3.4 Using the PceEmacs built-in editor
    • 3.4.1 Activating PceEmacs
    • 3.4.2 Bluffing through PceEmacs
      • 3.4.2.1 Edit modes
      • 3.4.2.2 Frequently used editor commands
    • 3.4.3 Prolog Mode
      • 3.4.3.1 Finding your way around
  • 3.5 The Graphical Debugger
    • 3.5.1 Invoking the window-based debugger
  • 3.6 The Prolog Navigator
  • 3.7 Accessing the IDE from your program
  • 3.8 Summary of the iDE
• 4 Built-in predicates
  • 4.1 Notation of Predicate Descriptions
  • 4.2 Character representation
  • 4.3 Loading Prolog source files
    • 4.3.1 Quick load files
  • 4.4 Listing and Editor Interface
  • 4.5 Verify Type of a Term
  • 4.6 Comparison and Unification or Terms
    • 4.6.1 Standard Order of Terms
  • 4.7 Control Predicates
  • 4.8 Meta-Call Predicates
  • 4.9 ISO compliant Exception handling
    • 4.9.1 Debugging and exceptions
    • 4.9.2 The exception term
    • 4.9.3 Printing messages
  • 4.10 Handling signals
    • 4.10.1 Notes on signal handling
  • 4.11 The `block' control-structure
  • 4.12 DCG Grammar rules
  • 4.13 Database
    • 4.13.1 Update view
    • 4.13.2 Indexing databases
  • 4.14 Declaring predicates properties
  • 4.15 Examining the program
  • 4.16 Input and output
    • 4.16.1 ISO Input and Output Streams
    • 4.16.2 Edinburgh-style I/O
    • 4.16.3 Switching Between Edinburgh and ISO I/O
  • 4.17 Status of streams
  • 4.18 Primitive character I/O
  • 4.19 Term reading and writing
  • 4.20 Analysing and Constructing Terms
  • 4.21 Analysing and Constructing Atoms
  • 4.22 Classifying characters
    • 4.22.1 Case conversion
  • 4.23 Representing text in strings
  • 4.24 Operators
  • 4.25 Character Conversion
  • 4.26 Arithmetic
  • 4.27 Arithmetic Functions
  • 4.28 Adding Arithmetic Functions
  • 4.29 Built-in list operations
  • 4.30 Finding all Solutions to a Goal
  • 4.31 Invoking Predicates on all Members of a List
  • 4.32 Forall
  • 4.33 Formatted Write
    • 4.33.1 Writef
    • 4.33.2 Format
    • 4.33.3 Programming Format
  • 4.34 Terminal Control
  • 4.35 Operating System Interaction
    • 4.35.1 Dealing with time and date
    • 4.35.2 Controlling the PLWIN.EXE console window
  • 4.36 File System Interaction
  • 4.37 User Toplevel Manipulation
  • 4.38 Creating a Protocol of the User Interaction
  • 4.39 Debugging and Tracing Programs
  • 4.40 Obtaining Runtime Statistics
  • 4.41 Execution profiling
    • 4.41.1 Profiling predicates
    • 4.41.2 Visualizing profiling data
    • 4.41.3 Information gathering
      • 4.41.3.1 Profiling in the Windows Implementation
  • 4.42 Memory Management
  • 4.43 Windows DDE interface
    • 4.43.1 DDE client interface
    • 4.43.2 DDE server mode
  • 4.44 Miscellaneous
• 5 Using Modules
  • 5.1 Why Using Modules?
  • 5.2 Name-based versus Predicate-based Modules
  • 5.3 Defining a Module
  • 5.4 Importing Predicates into a Module
    • 5.4.1 Reserved Modules
  • 5.5 Using the Module System
    • 5.5.1 Object Oriented Programming
  • 5.6 Meta-Predicates in Modules
    • 5.6.1 Definition and Context Module
    • 5.6.2 Overruling Module Boundaries
  • 5.7 Dynamic Modules
  • 5.8 Module Handling Predicates
  • 5.9 Compatibility of the Module System
    • 5.9.1 Emulating meta_predicate/1
• 6 Multi-threaded applications
  • 6.1 Creating and destroying Prolog threads
  • 6.2 Monitoring threads
  • 6.3 Thread communication
    • 6.3.1 Message queues
    • 6.3.2 Signalling threads
    • 6.3.3 Threads and dynamic predicates
  • 6.4 Thread synchronisation
  • 6.5 Thread-support library(threadutil)
  • 6.6 Multi-threaded mixed C and Prolog applications
    • 6.6.1 A Prolog thread for each native thread (one-to-one)
    • 6.6.2 Pooling Prolog engines (many-to-many)
      • 6.6.2.1 Engines in single-threaded SWI-Prolog
  • 6.7 Multithreading and the XPCE graphics system
  • 6.8 Threaded Prolog: Status and plans
• 7 Foreign Language Interface
  • 7.1 Overview of the Interface
  • 7.2 Linking Foreign Modules
    • 7.2.1 What linking is provided?
    • 7.2.2 What kind of loading should I be using?
  • 7.3 Dynamic Linking of shared libraries
  • 7.4 Using the library shlib for .DLL and .so files
    • 7.4.1 Static Linking
  • 7.5 Interface Data types
    • 7.5.1 Type term_t: a reference to a Prolog term
      • 7.5.1.1 Interaction with the garbage collector and stack-shifter
    • 7.5.2 Other foreign interface types
  • 7.6 The Foreign Include File
    • 7.6.1 Argument Passing and Control
      • 7.6.1.1 Non-deterministic Foreign Predicates
    • 7.6.2 Atoms and functors
      • 7.6.2.1 Atoms and atom-garbage collection
    • 7.6.3 Analysing Terms via the Foreign Interface
      • 7.6.3.1 Testing the type of a term
      • 7.6.3.2 Reading data from a term
      • 7.6.3.3 Exchanging text using length and string
      • 7.6.3.4 Reading a list
      • 7.6.3.5 An example: defining write/1 in C
    • 7.6.4 Constructing Terms
    • 7.6.5 Unifying data
    • 7.6.6 Calling Prolog from C
      • 7.6.6.1 Predicate references
      • 7.6.6.2 Initiating a query from C
    • 7.6.7 Discarding Data
    • 7.6.8 Foreign Code and Modules
    • 7.6.9 Prolog exceptions in foreign code
    • 7.6.10 Catching Signals (Software Interrupts)
    • 7.6.11 Miscellaneous
      • 7.6.11.1 Term Comparison
      • 7.6.11.2 Recorded database
      • 7.6.11.3 Getting file names
    • 7.6.12 Errors and warnings
    • 7.6.13 Environment Control from Foreign Code
    • 7.6.14 Querying Prolog
    • 7.6.15 Registering Foreign Predicates
    • 7.6.16 Foreign Code Hooks
    • 7.6.17 Storing foreign data
      • 7.6.17.1 Examples for storing foreign data
    • 7.6.18 Embedding SWI-Prolog in other applications
      • 7.6.18.1 Threading, Signals and embedded Prolog
  • 7.7 Linking embedded applications using plld
    • 7.7.1 A simple example
  • 7.8 The Prolog `home' directory
  • 7.9 Example of Using the Foreign Interface
  • 7.10 Notes on Using Foreign Code
    • 7.10.1 Memory Allocation
    • 7.10.2 Compatibility between Prolog versions
    • 7.10.3 Debugging Foreign Code
    • 7.10.4 Name Conflicts in C modules
    • 7.10.5 Compatibility of the Foreign Interface
• 8 Generating Runtime Applications
  • 8.1 Limitations of qsave_program
  • 8.2 Runtimes and Foreign Code
  • 8.3 Using program resources
    • 8.3.1 Predicates Definitions
    • 8.3.2 The plrc program
  • 8.4 Finding Application files
    • 8.4.1 Passing a path to the application
  • 8.5 The Runtime Environment
    • 8.5.1 The Runtime Emulator
• A The SWI-Prolog library
  • A.1 library( lists ): List Manipulation
    • A.1.1 Set Manipulation
  • A.2 library( check ): Elementary completeness checks
  • A.3 library( debug ): Some reusable code to help debugging applications
  • A.4 library( readutil ): Reading lines, streams and files
  • A.5 library( netscape ): Activating your Web-browser
  • A.6 library( registry ): Manipulating the Windows registry
  • A.7 library( url ): Analysing and constructing URL
• B Hackers corner
  • B.1 Examining the Environment Stack
  • B.2 Intercepting the Tracer
  • B.3 Hooks using the exception/3 predicate
  • B.4 Hooks for integrating libraries
  • B.5 Hooks for loading files
  • B.6 Readline Interaction
• C Glossary of Terms
• D SWI-Prolog License Conditions and Tools
  • D.1 The SWI-Prolog kernel and foreign libraries
    • D.1.1 The SWI-Prolog Prolog libraries
  • D.2 Contributing to the SWI-Prolog project
  • D.3 Software support to keep track of license conditions
• E Summary
  • E.1 Predicates
  • E.2 Library predicates
    • E.2.1 library(lists)
    • E.2.2 library(check)
    • E.2.3 library(readutil)
    • E.2.4 library(netscape)
    • E.2.5 library(registry)
    • E.2.6 library(url)
  • E.3 Arithmetic Functions
  • E.4 Operators
• F Bibliography