Subject: RE: [SWIPL] Announce: SwiProlog-C++ 0.1.0

From: Volker Wysk <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:14:38 +0100 (CET)

On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Schumann, David wrote:

> What advantages would you say this new interface has over Prof. Weilemaker's
> existing SWI-cpp set of classes?

SwiProlog-C++ is the result of a complaint about SWI-cpp by me (which
turned out to be wrong), which I've sent to the mailing list. A lot of
discussion followed between Jan and me on the mailing list, and (later) by
private mail. Jan has a thorough understanding of the (SWI-)Prolog
implementation(s), and I (imho) have a thorough understanding of the C++
language. So I decided to build a new interace. SwiProlog-C++ is meant to
replace SWI-cpp.

The two interfaces are very different. Some of the advantages:

- Much smoother integration in the C++ language

- Clarification of the semantics (in C++ terms) of the constructs which
  are imported from Prolog, and of memory management issues.

- The scope is all of the SWI-Prolog foreign language interface.

- Striving to be as easy as possible to use for C++ programmers which
  don't have any experience with Prolog implementations or a thorough
  understanding of how functional programs execute.

Explanations of what makes it so tricky to interface to Prolog can be
found in the SwiProlog-C++ manual.

V. W.