10.5 Changes Introduced in Version 3.7

• The concept of patchlevels removed and replaced by versions.
• library(chr): A new library module providing Constraint Handling Rules; see

            http://www.pst.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/~fruehwir/chr-solver.html
       

• Jasper, a bi-directional Java-interface, consisting of extensions to the existing FLI and a new library module library(jasper).
• Atom garbage collection, invoked by garbage_collect_atoms/0, and controlled by the agc_margin Prolog flag. New statistics options: atoms, atom_garbage_collection. New interface functions: SP_register_atom(), SP_unregister_atom().
• Calls with clean-up guaranteed, provided by call_cleanup/2, which replaces undo/1.
• Source-linked debugging, controlled by the source_info Prolog flag.
• Debugger enhancements: tracing of compiled code; a new debugger mode zip and built-in predicates zip/0, nozip/0; new debugger commands out n, skip i, quasi-skip i, zip, backtrace n, raise exception. Modules can be declared as hidden, which disables tracing of their predicates.
• Saved-states are available in runtime systems, and are portable across platforms and between development and runtime systems. save/[1,2] are gone. In most cases, save_program/2 can be used in their place, with a little rearrangement of your code. Predicates can be declared as volatile.
• An interface function SP_restore() is the C equivalent of restore/1, which now only restores the program state, leaving the Prolog execution stacks unchanged.
• The GNU Emacs interface was enhanced: source-linked debugging, new menus, speed, help functions, electric functions, indentation, portability, bug fixes.
• The reader can return layout information about terms read in. New read_term/3 option: layout(-Layout). New hook predicate: user:term_expansion/4.
• Module name expansion of goals is done prior to execution of meta-calls.
• Imported predicates can be spied and abolished.
• random:randset/3 returns a set in standard order.
• db:db_canonical/[2,3] are new; can be used to check whether two TermRefs refer to the same term.
• clpfd:serialized_precedence/3 and clpfd:serialized_precedence_resource/4 are new; model non-overlapping tasks with precedence constraints or sequence-dependent setup times.
• In object method bodies, goals of the form :Goal are translated according to the manual. Earlier versions treated arguments occurring in the `:' position of meta-predicates specially.
• A new interface function SP_raise_fault() and interface macro SP_on_fault() are available for handling runtime faults that cannot be caught as exceptions.
• A new interface function SP_set_memalloc_hooks() is available for redefining the memory manager's bottom layer. Related to that, there is a new command-line option -m.
• Development and runtime systems have been reorganized internally. All use a runtime kernel shared object or DLL, and are initialized by restoring saved-states. Development systems additionally use a development kernel shared object or DLL.
• The -B command-line option is gone in the start-up script, and some new options have appeared.
• Under UNIX: new option -base to override the executable used by the start-script.
• Under UNIX: improvements in the configure-script; better options to specify Tcl/Tk versions and paths.
• Hookable standard streams.
• Floating-point operations on Digital Alpha are now IEEE-conformant.
• reinitialise/0 does not load any initialization files given in -i or -l command line flags.
• Under UNIX: New option -S to spmkrs and spmkds to link the SICStus Runtime Kernel (and development extensions for spmkds) statically into the executable.
• [File1,File2,...] was broken.
• require/1 did not find all directories.
• Runtime systems could crash after GC.
• Bugs in clp[qr]:dump/3, clp[qr]:expand/0, clp[qr]:noexpand/0.
• The garbage collector reported too many bytes collected.
• Memory overflows were not handled gracefully.
• Imported predicates couldn't be abolished.
• arrays:arefa/3, arrays:arefl/3, heaps:min_of_heap/5 are now steadfast.
• Most library(clpfd) predicates now check the type of their arguments. Bugs fixed in relation/3, serialized/2, all_distinct/1.
• frozen/2 could crash on an argument of the wrong type.
• SP_get_list_n_chars() does not require a proper list.
• Problems with exceptions in embedded commands in source files.
• Problems with load_files(Files, [compilation_mode(assert_all)]).
• For load_files(Files, [if(changed)]), a non-module-file is not considered to have been previously loaded if it was loaded into a different module.
• Incorrect translation of if/3 goals in grammar rules.
• On Win32, system:mktemp/2 sometimes returned filenames with backslashes in them.