Corr. Typo (Was: Is SWI-Prolog backward oriented or forward oriented?)

 > has a flag (module sensitive) called var_prefix.
 Interesting backward oriented featuritis, to support
Prolog systems from the past, can be also rationalized
as useful for the present. You find a few real world
 source code listings in the Computer Museum below,
very old Prolog systems used the star (*) as a variable
prefix, then some Prolog systems used the underscore (_)
 as variable prefix. Lower case was not always supported,
some Prolog systems had a ‘NOLC’ (No-Lower Case) and
‘LC’ (Lower Case) directive, to switch modes:
 Computer History Museum’s Software Preservation Group
https://www.softwarepreservation.org/
 Edit 29.06.2025:
If only SWI-Prolog would put the same effort in forward
oriented features that it does in backward oriented
features, i.e. features that deal with Prolog systems
 of the future. For example supporting this trivial gadget:
 ?- X = [a,b,c]
`abc`
 Mild Shock schrieb:

Hi,
>
Interrestingly Prolog nearly had a "Jazelle":
>
Meanwhile, in Oxford I made contact with Tim [Robinson]
from High Level Hardware, who had developed a microcoded
workstation called the Orion (there is a good Wikipedia
article on this machine). Tim wanted a Prolog system for
the Orion, so I gave him the Prolog-X reference
implementation. He microcoded it, and we reckoned
it would have amazing performance because of that.
However, several simultaneous events conspired to
halt the microcoded Prolog on the Orion.
https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/prolog
>
Derived from Prolog-X, so basically from ZIP.
>
Bye
>
Mild Shock schrieb:

Hi,
>
Jeff Barnet might have a point:
>
 > Fran's specialty was bring graph theory into computer development
>
although he sounds boring. Prolog is very
weak when using graph theory to code generation.
Even Prolog Cafe is based on WAM, and not LLVM.
>
WAM is linear code, LLVM sees code as graph
of blocks. Here is an example:
>
entry:
   %cond = icmp eq i32 %x, 0
   br i1 %cond, label %if_zero, label %if_nonzero
>
if_zero:
   ; do something
   br label %merge
>
if_nonzero:
   ; do something else
   br label %merge
>
merge:
   %val = phi i32 [0, %if_zero], [1, %if_nonzero]
   ret i32 %val
>
Its not the AST of the source code, but the IR,
i.e. internal representation after some AST
processing.
>
Today I was wrestling quite a number of hours,
to figure out whether liveness analysis can
be done in one pass. My Prolog system Dogelog
>
Player uses two passes, so that assertz/1 is
a little slow. Maybe I implement a fast path
without the liveness analysis for the
>
dynamic database, to speed it up.
>
Bye
>
Mild Shock schrieb:

Hi,
>
Back in the early days SUN was already talking
about Java on in CPU. Interestingly this happened:
>
The most prominent use of Jazelle DBX is by
manufacturers of mobile phones to increase the
execution speed of Java ME games and applications.
A Jazelle-aware Java virtual machine (JVM) will
attempt to run Java bytecode in hardware, while
returning to the software for more complicated,
or lesser-used bytecode operations. ARM claims that
approximately 95% of bytecode in typical program
usage ends up being directly processed in the hardware.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle
>
So in the 90's we had first internet, and then
in the 00's we had mobile phones. The 10's had
big data and early deep leearning.
>
But Python is still slow as fuck in the 20's.
They should invent a CPU that can do Pantilope,
i.e. direct executon of Python.
>
Bye

>

>