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Groups > comp.lang.prolog > #15884

The lost Genius of GNU Prolog FFI

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Hi,

We really find a lost Genius in GNU Prolog FFI.
It has this wonderful thing. The field "unify"
controls whether the actual argument must

be unified at the exit of the C function.

10.3.6  Input/output arguments
typedef struct
     {
      PlBool is_var;
      PlBool unify;
      union
         {
          PlLong l;
          char  *s;
          double d;
         }value;
     }PlFIOArg;

Judging from just looking at it, one can basically
communicate "don't care" arguments, usuall expressed
as "_" i.e. annonymous variables, or some variants

of Prolog systems also allow "_Name", but effectively
variables that only occure at one call site location.
But why is it lost. It is slowly subject to bit rot.

 > www.gprolog.org verwendet ein ungültiges Sicherheitszertifikat.
 >
 > Das Zertifikat gilt nur für folgende Namen: trantor.univ-paris1.fr,
 > *.univ-paris1.fr, univ-paris1.fr, *.pantheonsorbonne.fr,
 > pantheonsorbonne.fr
 >
 > Fehlercode: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

Some older browsers fall back to HTTP, some newer
browsers do not fall back to HTTP, and require an
exceptions. I dunno how this affects your FFI project

and some merits of using GNU Prolog. But somehow projects
become quickly outdated, either from the inside or from
the outside. I think its an error to think one can make

a website, and then forget it for decades, you basically
have to internally reviewed it every 2-3 years. So half
dead projects like GNU Prolog based on C will disappear

in favor to for example Rust projects, simply because
Rust might be more attentive and more alive now,
until Rust is replaced by the next wave of programming

languages. Its the same with repositories that were
accessible via FTP and had PS files, nobody can access
them easily nowadays. In a few months you might need

to place an ai.txt on your website, and add some
certificate to it, to prove your code was made by a
human and not by a robot, because of cybersecurity

and alignment issues.

Bye

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The lost Genius of GNU Prolog FFI Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2026-08-24 17:03 +0200
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