SICStus Prolog

The Prolog Library

The Prolog library comprises a number of packages that are thought to be useful in a number of applications. Note that the predicates in the Prolog library are not built-in predicates. One has to explicitly load each package to get access to its predicates. The following packages are provided:

arrays: provides an implementation of extendible arrays with logarithmic access time.
assoc: uses AVL trees to implement "association lists", i.e. extendible finite mappings from terms to terms.
atts: provides a means of associating with variables arbitrary attributes, i.e. named properties that can be used as storage locations as well as hooks into Prolog's unification.
heaps: implements binary heaps, the main application of which are priority queues.
lists: provides basic operations on lists.
terms: provides a number of operations on terms.
ordsets: defines operations on sets represented as lists with the elements ordered in Prolog standard order.
queues: defines operations on queues (FIFO stores of information).
random: provides a random number generator.
system: provides access to operating system services.
trees: uses binary trees to represent non-extendible arrays with logarithmic access time. The functionality is very similar to that of library(arrays), but library(trees) is slightly more efficient if the array does not need to be extendible.
ugraphs: provides an implementation of directed and undirected graphs with unlabeled edges.
wgraphs: provides an implementation of directed and undirected graphs where each edge has an integral weight.
sockets: provides an interface to system calls for manipulating sockets.
linda/client
linda/server: provides an implementation of the Linda concept for process communication.
bdb: provides an interface to Berkeley DB, for storage and retrieval of terms on disk files with user-defined multiple indexing.
clpb: provides constraint solving over Booleans.
clpq
clpr: provides constraint solving over Q (Rationals) or R (Reals).
clpfd: provides constraint solving over Finite (Integer) Domains
chr: provides Constraint Handling Rules
fdbg: provides a debugger for finite domain constraint programs
objects: provides the combination of the logic programming and the object-oriented programming paradigms.
tcltk: An interface to the Tcl/Tk language and toolkit.
vbsp: An interface for calling Prolog from Visual Basic.
gauge: is a profiling tool for Prolog programs with a graphical interface based on tcltk.
charsio: defines I/O predicates that read from, or write to, a code-list.
jasper: An interface to the Java language.
COM Client: An interface to Microsoft COM automaton objects.
flinkage: is a tool for generating glue code for the Foreign Language Interface when building statically linked runtime systems or development systems. No longer supported but provided for porting really old code.
timeout: provides a way of running goals with an execution time limit.
wcx_example: provides a sample implementation of a Wide Character Extension (WCX) box.

To load a library package Package, you will normally enter a query

     | ?- use_module(library(Package)).

A library package normally consists of one or more hidden modules.

An alternative way of loading from the library is using the built-in predicate require/1 (see Read In). The index file INDEX.pl needed by require/1 can be created by the make_index program. This program is loaded as:

     | ?- use_module(library(mkindex)).

make_index:make_library_index(+LibraryDirectory): Creates a file INDEX.pl in LibraryDirectory. All *.pl files in the directory and all its subdirectories are scanned for module/2 declarations. From these declarations, the exported predicates are entered into the index.