We now mention, in passing, some of the I/O facilities built into Prolog. We have already met a way of inputting multiple clauses via consult/1 (and reconsult/1). We have already met predicates that produce output --- write/1 and nl/0--- in chapter 4. Much more information can be found in chapter 10.10.
For now, we will not show how to output to a file ---see chapter 10.10 for the details. In passing, we mention that a single Prolog term can be read in using read/1. Input using this predicate must be terminated by the standard `.' followed by white space.
Here are some low level I/O predicates:
get0(X) unifies X with next non blank printable characterNote that they do not have a declarative reading. They fit poorly into the theoretical structure underlying Prolog ---but other languages suffer from this problem ( e.g. ML).(in ASCII code) from current input stream
get(X) unifies X with next character (in ASCII) from
current input stream
put(X) puts a character on to the current output stream.
X must be bound to a legal ASCII code