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HELP PLOGNEWS A chronological summary of changes to the Prolog system. For news prior to Poplog Version 14.1 see HELP * PLOGNEWS.V14. CONTENTS - (Use <ENTER> g to access required sections) 1 Poplog Version 14.5 2 Poplog Version 14.2 3 Poplog Version 14.1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Poplog Version 14.5 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 16/09/83 (Simon Nichols) --- A similar problem in LIBRARY * SHOWTREE to the one noted below has been fixed as a result of changes to the Pop-11 library LIB * SHOWTREE. 19/08/93 (Robert Duncan) --- Fixed a bug in LIBRARY * SHOWTERM which prevented variables from being displayed correctly. 04/08/93 (Robert Duncan) --- The compiler now records for each predicate the full pathname of the file in which it was defined. This information can be recovered for a predicate using predicate_info/2 which includes in its output a term of the form: file = File where File is the pathname of the defining file as an atom. --- A new source command invokes the editor on the definition of a predicate. The command takes a predicate name as argument and can be called either from the top-level or from Ved. For example, to edit the definition of example/3 do: ?- source example/3 or <ENTER> source example/3 The command works by calling Ved on the file in which the predicate was defined and then using the <ENTER> f command to find the start of the definition. It can only work for predicates which have been compiled and which have their file names recorded: this excludes built-in predicates and any predicate defined dynamically using assert/1. 03/08/93 (Robert Duncan) --- Printing to the user output stream has been modified to reduce the number of atoms which get split across line-breaks. 02/08/93 (Robert Duncan) --- The file extension '.pro' is now recognised by Ved as indicating a Prolog program file. This is the default extension used by some other Prolog systems, and this change means that Ved will automatically select the prolog subsystem when editing such a file. You can arrange for other types of file to be recognised as Prolog programs by adding their extensions to the Pop-11 list variable prologfiletypes whose initial value is: ['.pl' '.pro'] Items in this list must be strings and should include a leading '.'. The first item in the list is used as the default file extension by the Prolog compiler. 16/07/93 (Robert Duncan) --- Changes to the semantics of dynamic predicates: o The declaration dynamic/1 now ensures that a definition exists for each predicate so declared: if there is no existing definition, then a new one is created with no clauses. The effect is the same as if a single clause had been asserted and then immediately retracted; if called, the predicate will always fail. Thus, a dynamic predicate will never raise an 'UNDEFINED PREDICATE' error and the behaviour of dynamic predicates is unaffected by the handling of such errors selected by unknown/2. Similarly, predicate_info/2 will never return an attribute list containing both the atoms 'dynamic' and 'undefined'. o The operations of assert and retract are still valid for static predicates, but now perform an implicit dynamic declaration as a side-effect. Thus, once a predicate has been asserted or retracted it becomes dynamic and remains so until it is either explicitly declared static again, or is abolished. In particular, if the predicate is redefined by reconsulting, it will be redefined still in dynamic mode. 16/07/93 (Robert Duncan) --- abolish/1 now removes all trace of a predicate, including any declarations for that predicate and any spy-points. For a predicate that has been abolished, predicate_info/2 will always report just: [undefined] 16/07/93 (Robert Duncan) --- predicate_info/2 now always succeeds, even for predicates which are undefined: in this case, the list of attributes returned for the predicate will contain the atom 'undefined', e.g. ?- predicate_info(unlikely/103, I). I = [undefined] ? predicate_info/2 reports 'undefined' for precisely those predicates which would raise an 'UNDEFINED PREDICATE' error if called. 16/07/93 (Robert Duncan) The predicate expand_term/2 is now applied to all terms read by the compiler, including goals for evaluation read in query mode. 16/07/93 (Robert Duncan) --- A new predicate include/1 allows the contents of a file or a list of files to be included in the current compilation stream. This is designed to be used as a directive: :- include(Files). which causes terms read from the named Files to be interpolated in the current compilation stream as if they had been read from the stream itself. This is distinct from explicitly compiling the same files: :- compile(Files). which causes a nested invocation of the compiler to be created. Note that inclusion of files is done on the basis of terms rather than characters, so each included file must be sufficiently well-formed that it could be compiled in its own right. 16/07/93 (Robert Duncan) Input streams opened by the compiler are now completely independent of those opened by see/1. In the following example, variables C1 and C2 will be bound to the first two clauses read from File: see(File), read(C1), compile(File), see(File), read(C2). (Previously, the intervening call to the compiler would have closed the File stream, so that the second see would have reopened the file and C2 would have been bound to the same first clause as C1.) As a consequence of this change, the predicate seeing/1 evaluated as a directive will always report the current input as 'inchan'. 16/07/93 (Robert Duncan) --- A new predicate compile/2 provides a standard interface to the Prolog compiler: all other compilation predicates are now defined in terms of this. A call to the compiler has the general form: ?- compile(Files, CompileMode). Files is a single filename or a list of filenames to be compiled in order according to CompileMode. The compile mode determines the way terms read from the files are interpreted, and must be one of the atoms: consult reconsult query The consult and reconsult modes are as before, but the query mode is new: this behaves like the interactive top-level, where each term read is interpreted as a goal to be evaluated and any variable bindings are displayed on the user stream. Directives in a file -- i.e terms with the functor :-/1 -- and queries explicitly introduced with the functor ?-/1 are interpreted identically in all modes. The existing compilation predicates have been redefined as follows: compile(File) :- compile(File, reconsult). reconsult(File) :- compile(File, reconsult). consult(File) :- compile(File, consult). [File|Files] :- compile([File|Files], consult). See PLOGHELP * COMPILE. 15/07/93 (Robert Duncan) --- The Pop-11 identifiers prolog, :- and ?- are now syntax words rather than macros. One side-effect of this change is that it's now possible to use the :- and ?- syntax in contexts other than at execute level, e.g. :- prolog_language(pop11). define hello(); :- format("Hello from Prolog~n"). enddefine; hello(); Hello from Prolog (although the value of this is limited). 14/07/93 (Robert Duncan) --- The Pop-11 library LIB * PROLOGLIBLIST has been changed so that it no longer adds the Prolog library directories into popuseslist. Anybody who has been relying on this behaviour to allow the viewing of Prolog library files without the Prolog system being loaded, can get the same effect with the command: <ENTER> prolog showlib <library-name> The directories in prologliblist are still searched by Prolog both for the showlib command and for the predicate library/1. 28/04/93 (Robert Duncan) --- For mixed-language programmers, a new Pop-11 syntax form define_prolog has been added which simplifies the business of creating Prolog predicates using the Pop-11 continuation-passing style. So you can now do: :- prolog_language(pop11). define:prolog hello/0(contn); lvars contn; printf('Hello world\n'); chain(contn); enddefine; :- prolog_language(prolog). ?- hello. Hello world yes See HELP * DEFINE_PROLOG for more details. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 Poplog Version 14.2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 01/06/93 (Simon Nichols) --- Two bugs in LIBRARY * EDINSYNT have been fixed: o If an incomplete term was followed by end of file, the tokenizer would go into a loop, terminated only by Prolog running out of memory. This situation is now correctly handled, resulting in the error message "incomplete term before end of file". The incomplete term is discarded. o In a file being consulted or reconsulted, a command (see PLOGHELP * COMMANDS) immediately following a comment was ignored. This has been fixed. 22/05/92 (Simon Nichols) --- A new library LIBRARY * HIGHER_ORDER has been added. This library defines some higher-order predicates which operate on lists and on the arguments of terms. In particular, it defines the useful maplist/2 and maplist/3. For practical purposes, a higher-order predicate is one which takes as arguments a predicate and some structured data, and applies the predicate to each component of the data. These higher-order predicates are efficent as they have been defined in terms of the new call/N family of predicates (see below). See PLOGHELP * HIGHER_ORDER for details. 21/05/92 (Simon Nichols) --- Attempting to call a number as a goal now results in an appropriate error. Previously, such calls either failed or raised "undefined predicate" errors. 25/04/92 (Simon Nichols) --- The call/1 built-in predicate has been augmented by a whole family of predicates call/N (for all N > 0). In general, call/N invokes a goal formed from its arguments: the first argument is either an atom standing for a predicate name or a term representing a "closure" (i.e., a predicate with one or more "frozen" arguments), and this is applied to the remaining N - 1 arguments. The practical benefit is that a term representing the goal to be called does not have to be constructed, which is the case when only call/1 is available. The call/N family is implemented efficiently: there is an almost negligible overhead in using them, compared with invoking a goal directly in the body of a clause. There is thus no longer any efficiency barrier to defining and using "higher-order" predicates, such as maplist/2 and maplist/3, providing they are defined in terms of the appropriate call/N predicate. See PLOGHELP * CALL for details. 14/04/92 (Robert Duncan) --- New predicates format/1 and format/2 can be used for formatting output. See PLOGHELP * FORMAT. 10/04/92 (Robert Duncan) --- Changes to the all-solutions predicates: o setof/3 and bagof/3 have been extended to allow existential quantification anywhere within the goal being evaluated. So for example, the following two goals are now equivalent: ?- setof(X, (Y^p(X,Y), Z^q(X,Z)), S). ?- setof(X, Y^Z^(p(X,Y), q(X,Z)), S). As a consequence, the existential quantifier ^/2 is now evaluable in its own right, with the interpretation: _ ^ G :- G . o findall/3 has been built in to the system, making the findall library redundant. See PLOGHELP * FINDALL. o fast_bagof/3 has been redefined in terms of findall/3, as follows: fast_bagof(X, P, B) :- findall(X, P, B), B \== []. This does cause a change in behaviour: any solutions in B will be in the natural (database) order where previously they were returned in *reverse* order. This was always a mistake: the change means that now findall/3, bagof/3 and fast_bagof/3 all return solutions in the same order. Given the trivial nature of the above definition, and the equally trivial: fast_setof(X, P, S) :- findall(X, P, B), B \== [], sort(B, S). use of these highly non-standard predicates is deprecated in favour of the standard findall/3. 18/02/92 (Robert Duncan) --- Modifications to the behaviour of the run-time error handler prolog_error/2 (these should be of interest only to users who've redefined this for themselves): (1) It is no longer necessary for prolog_error/2 to have a final "catch-all" clause which traps any error: errors not catered for explicitly now get passed automatically to prolog_syserror/2. (2) Run-time error-handling is now disabled during calls to prolog_error/2 to avoid problems with infinite error loops. A new predicate prolog_error_handling/1 allows explicit re-enabling of the error handler where necessary. See PLOGHELP * PROLOG_ERROR for details. 28/01/92 (Robert Duncan) --- New predicates spy_action/1 and spy_action/2 can be used to change the behaviour of the spy debugger: see PLOGHELP * SPY_ACTION. leash/1 and unleash/1 are now defined in terms of these. 28/01/92 (Robert Duncan) --- New VED commands: <ENTER> spy [spec] <ENTER> nospy [spec] allow for adding and removing spy-points from the command line. The optional argument has the same form as that expected by the corresponding predicates spy/1 and nospy/1. 28/01/92 (Robert Duncan) --- spy/0 no longer places spy-points on predicates whose names begin 'prolog_'. Such predicates can still be spied, but must be named explicitly. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 Poplog Version 14.1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 13/12/91 (Simon Nichols) --- The new evaluable predicate prolog_area_size/1 allows the absolute size of the Prolog memory area to be set or inspected. See PLOGHELP * SYSTEM. 10/91 (Robert Duncan) --- A fix to LIBRARY SIMPLEPOP: all the 'dopop' predicates now fully dereference their arguments before evaluating them. Also, passing anything other than an atom or string for evaluation now raises an error where previously the goal would just fail. See PLOGHELP * SIMPLEPOP. 10/91 (Simon Nichols) --- The name of the predicate which switches between Poplog Prolog syntax and full Edinburgh syntax once LIBRARY * EDINSYNT has been loaded has been changed from syntax/1 to prolog_syntax/1. This (unfortunately non-upwardly compatible) change has been made to avoid clashes with predicates named syntax/1 in users' programs. --- A new evaluable predicate, close/1, has been added. This closes the specified stream, currently open for either input or output. See PLOGHELP * CLOSE. 06/91 (Simon Nichols) --- The new evaluable predicate prolog_restart/0 performs a full restart of the Prolog system, useful after restoration of a saved image. See PLOGHELP * PROLOG_RESTART. --- The behaviour of syntax errors when compiling a file from inside VED has changed. Outside of VED, the Prolog system attempts to skip past the erroneous clause and then resumes reading. This used to happen inside VED also. Now, the system will stop after the first syntax error in a file loaded from within VED, thereby leaving the cursor near the point at which the error occurred. See PLOGHELP * ERROR for further information about syntax (and other) errors in Prolog. --- The new LIBRARY CATCH defines the predicates catch/3 and throw/1: these provide a method for user programs to raise and handle exceptions. The exception handling mechanism is complementary to that provided by the standard error handling predicate, prolog_error/2 (see PLOGHELP * PROLOG_ERROR). They are based on the description given in the draft ISO specification for Standard Prolog. See PLOGHELP * CATCH for details. --- The new LIBRARY ON_INTERRUPT defines the predicate on_interrupt/2: this provides a way for Prolog programs to trap interrupts (such as occur when you type the terminal interrupt character, usually CTRL-C) by specifying an "interrupt action", usually a goal, which is called when an interrupt occurs. See PLOGHELP * ON_INTERRUPT for details. 05/91 (Simon Nichols) --- A new evaluable predicate, printq/1, has been added. This is simlilar to print/1, except that it behaves like writeq/1 rather than write/1 if no suitable portray clause exists for the term to be printed. In other words, it quotes atoms which need to be quoted in order to be re-readable using read/1 (see PLOGHELP * PRINT). --- A new command, bye, has been added which exits Prolog (like the evaluable predicate halt/0). This is for consistency with the other Poplog languages, which can all be exited by typing "bye". --- C.all/help/plognews --- Copyright University of Sussex 1993. All rights reserved.