fcompile(++File, ++Options)

File

Name of source file (Atom or string)

Options

List of valid options and their values

Description

This predicate is obsolete, use compile/2 instead.

Compiles the specified Prolog source file and generates an object file with the same base name as the source file but with suffix .eco. Object files can be loaded by the built-in predicates use_module/1, lib/1, compile/1 and ensure_loaded/1, and also with the eclipse -b command-line option.

File must be instantiated to a legitimate specification for an existing file except for the suffix, which may be omitted. Options is a list of Option:Value pairs where Option and value can be:

compile: YesOrNo

YesOrNo is either the atom yes or no. For 'yes', fcompile will try to first compile File (checking that it has not already been compiled first). This is usually what is required, as it ensures that File can be properly read to generate the object file. The default is 'yes'.

format: ByteOrText

ByteOrText is either the atom byte or text. If 'text', the object file will be in a textual format. If 'byte', the object file will be in a binary format which is larger, but will load faster and is not human readable. The default is byte.

outdir: OutputDirectory

OutputDirectory is the directory where the generated object file will be placed. It can be an atom or a string. The default is the current working directory.

verbose: YesOrNo

YesOrNo is either the atom yes or no. For 'yes', fcompile will report in detail the predicates it is dumping out. This is probably only needed for debugging fcompile, to trace its progress. The default is 'no'.

The predicate will look for File with a `source' suffix (i.e. no suffix, .ecl or .pl), compile the file by calling compile, and generate an object form of the source file with suffix .eco. The user should use include/1 directives to include all files that are in the same module as the master file, and use_module/1 directives for files that define a different module. Files mentioned in include directives will not need to be fcompiled separately for their object form.

This object form can be loaded into an ECLiPSe session even on a different operating system/hardware platform from the one on which it was generated. However, the object format may change incompatibly between different releases of ECLiPSe.

The fcompile library does not need to be loaded in order to load the object file. The built-in predicates ensure_loaded/1, use_module/1 and lib/1,2 will try to load an object file in preference to a source file, if both are present. The compile built-ins on the other hand will prefer source files, unless the .eco suffix is explicitly given.

It is recommended that object files always contain proper modules. If an object file contains module-free code, then loading it into an existing module that already has code can cause conflicts with auxiliary predicates (e.g. from do/2 loop constructs).

Restrictions:

• macro definitions should be quoted using no_macro_expansion/1, e.g.

           :- local macro(no_macro_expansion(maxint), 9999).
       

• directives in the module should not change the state of compiled code.
• big integer constants between -2^63 and -2^31 and between 2^31 and 2^63 should not appear directly in the source, and will provoke a warning because the generated object code will not be portable between 32 and 64 bit machines.

Modules

Examples

   fcompile(my_prog, []).   % equivalent to fcompile(my_prog)

   fcompile(my_prog, [format:text, outdir:'../']).
   % generate the object file in text format, and place it in the parent dir

See Also