Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!munnari.oz.au!cs.mu.oz.au!ok From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog Subject: Re: Turbo Prolog (was Re: logic programs -> procedural lang?) Keywords: Prolog, typing, compiler efficiency Message-ID: <2256@munnari.oz.au> Date: 30 Sep 89 07:30:25 GMT References: <27335@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <869@gamera.cs.utexas.edu> <1989Sep29.144838.16225@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au Lines: 29 In article <1989Sep29.144838.16225@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, byu@csri.toronto.edu (Benjamin Yu) writes: : In article <2181@munnari.oz.au> ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) writes: : # In short, you were surprised to discover that what you got was NOT a : # Prolog compiler, but a compiler for another (closely related, but still : # OTHER) language. : : Can someone enlighten or remind me of what so terrible a thing which Borland : has done in Turbo Prolog?? Nobody said that the authors of the program which Borland bought and market as Turbo Prolog did anything TERRIBLE. The claim is simply that it is sufficiently different from ``Prolog'' that it is best regarded as another language. You can write non-trivial programs which work in both SICStus Prolog and LPA Mac Prolog; you have to work at it, but you can do it. But you cannot lift a Prolog program out of a book like "The Art of Prolog" and expect it to work in Turbo Prolog; you'll have to do a lot of editing. And you cannot take a Turbo Prolog program and run it unchanged in a Prolog system. The major difference is that Prolog was designed to be an interactive language like Lisp; you can easily add to and change a running program. Turbo Prolog was designed to be statically compiled like Pascal. Prolog programs can easily manipulate other Prolog programs: read(Term) can be used to read clauses, for example. -- GNUs are more derived than other extant alcelaphines,| Richard A. O'Keefe such as bonteboks, and show up later in the fossil | visiting Melbourne record than less highly derived species. (Eldredge) | ok@munmurra.cs.mu.OZ.au