4.9 Compatibility of the Module System

The principles behind the module system of SWI-Prolog differ in a number of aspects from the Quintus Prolog module system.

• The SWI-Prolog module system allows the user to redefine system predicates.
• All predicates that are available in the system and user modules are visible in all other modules as well.
• Quintus has the `meta_predicate/1' declaration were SWI-Prolog has the module_transparent/1 declaration.

The meta_predicate/1 declaration causes the compiler to tag arguments that pass module sensitive information with the module using the :/2 operator. This approach has some disadvantages:

• Changing a meta_predicate declaration implies all predicates calling the predicate need to be reloaded. This can cause serious consistency problems.
• It does not help for dynamically defined predicates calling module sensitive predicates.
• It slows down the compiler (at least in the SWI-Prolog architecture).
• At least within the SWI-Prolog architecture the run-time overhead is larger than the overhead introduced by the transparent mechanism.

Unfortunately the transparent predicate approach also has some disadvantages. If a predicate A passes module sensitive information to a predicate B, passing the same information to a module sensitive system predicate both A and B should be declared transparent. Using the Quintus approach only A needs to be treated special (i.e. declared with meta_predicate/1) (22). A second problem arises if the body of a transparent predicate uses module sensitive predicates for which it wants to refer to its own module. Suppose we want to define findall/3 using assert/1 and retract/1 (23). The example in figure 4 gives the solution.

:- module(findall, [findall/3]). :- dynamic solution/1. :- module_transparent findall/3, store/2. findall(Var, Goal, Bag) :- assert(findall:solution('$mark')), store(Var, Goal), collect(Bag). store(Var, Goal) :- Goal, % refers to context module of % caller of findall/3 assert(findall:solution(Var)), fail. store(_, _). collect(Bag) :- ...,

4.9.1 Emulating meta_predicate/1

The Quintus meta_predicate/1 directive can in many cases be replaced by the transparent declaration. Below is the definition of meta_predicate/1 as available from library(quintus).

:- op(1150, fx, (meta_predicate)). meta_predicate((Head, More)) :- !, meta_predicate1(Head), meta_predicate(More). meta_predicate(Head) :- meta_predicate1(Head). meta_predicate1(Head) :- Head =.. [Name|Arguments], member(Arg, Arguments), module_expansion_argument(Arg), !, functor(Head, Name, Arity), module_transparent(Name/Arity). meta_predicate1(_). % just a mode declaration module_expansion_argument(:). module_expansion_argument(N) :- integer(N).

The discussion above about the problems with the transparent mechanism show the two cases in which this simple transformation does not work.