Changes Introduced in Version 3.8.4

Version 3.8.4 is mainly a bugfix release. New features:

• abort/0 returns to the innermost top-level, and does not switch off the debugger.
• library(clpfd): Given Term containing domain variables, fd_copy_term(Term,Template,Body) will compute Template and Body where Template is a copy of the same term with all variables renamed to new variables such that executing Body will post constraints equivalent to those that Term is attached to.
• library(tcltk)):
  • Added list(CommandList) to the possible command formats. It creates a TCL list by, in effect, calling the TCL command list with the result of converting each element of CommandList. The result is that Tcl will treat the result as a list with the same length as CommandList even if the elements contains spaces or other special characters.

    Current code that uses ListOfCommands should probably often be better off using list(ListOfCommands). See the manual for details.

  • Added writeq(Command) and write_canonical(Command) as legal command specifications. Documented that write_canonical is the preferred way of passing Prolog terms from Prolog to Tcl and back.
  • More error checking and reporting. In particular, the output of a Prolog goal must now be in the special command format. It used to just silently generate garbage. Potential backward compatibility issue.

    Now the value of variables named _ are ignored. This makes it possible to avoid errors if some uninteresting result is not in the special command format. This used to be less of a problem since such errors were silently ignored. (Please note: in SICStus 3.8.5 this was changed to ignore all variables with names starting with underscore _.)

  • International (UNICODE) character now passed between Tcl/Tk and Prolog. Made the stream used internally by library(tcltk) always use UTF8 so that non seven bit characters gets recognized by Tcl. This transfers character codes unchanged between SICStus and Tcl so it assumes that SICStus interprets character codes as UNICODE (as this is what Tcl does).
  • tk_num_main_windows/2 and tk_main_window/2 no longer segfaults under Windows if tk_new/2 has not been called. Added a "tk_new called" check to some other routines as well. The segfault occurred when, due to a bug in Tk, Tk uses stubs to access Tcl. Presently Tk uses Tcl stubs by default only under Windows.
  • The empty string resulting from an empty CommandList now becomes properly NUL terminated.
  • prolog_call now resets the FLI stack to avoid space leaks when Tcl/tk is the master and Prolog the slave.
  • Corrected some bugs in the Tcl/Tk documentation. Added examples of using the new command specifications.
• library('linda/client'): New predicate shutdown_server/0. The server keeps running after receiving this signal, until such time as all the clients have closed their connections. Courtesy of Malcolm Ryan.
• Some more options are available when the user is asked about redefining predicates.

Bug fixes:

• skip_line/1, at_end_of_file/0, tab/2.
• Asserting, copying or throwing terms with domain variables now raises an exception instead of crashing.
• Non-existent files and the include/1 directive.
• GC and BDD interaction.
• save_program/[1,2], save_files/[1,2]: check for I/O errors; problems with '$ref'/2 terms; problems with SICStus Objects.
• unload_foreign_resource/1: false alarm in prelinked binaries.
• Jasper: glue code sometimes crashed when returning from a Java method that throwed an exception.
• Jasper: glue code reported errors for bogus argument numbers.
• library(tcltk)): Bug fixes and enhancements; see the New Features section above for details.
• spld/splfr under Windows: Errors are now properly reflected in the exit code from these tools.
• Error handling determining current directory.
• library(clpfd): disequations speeded up, bugs in disjoint1/[1,2], disjoint2/[1,2], element/3, propagation, entailment detection, backward compatibility.
• Workaround for crashes when static SICStus executables, i.e. built with spld --static, load (non-prelinked) dynamic foreign resources. With this workaround loading a dynamic foreign resource into a static SICStus executable will still, unnecessarily, load the shared version of the SICStus runtime system (libsprt311.so) but the shared runtime system will not be used. This will be fixed in a forthcoming release.