3.1.2 Project Special Files

There are a number of tasks you typically carry out on your project, such as loading it, creating a saved-state, debugging it, etc. Good practice on large projects is to define small files that hold the commands to execute such a task, name this file after the task and give it a file-extension that makes starting easy (see section 3.1.1.1). The task load is generally central to these tasks. Here is a tentative list.

• load.pl
  Use this file to set up the environment (Prolog flags and file search paths) and load the sources. Quite commonly this file also provides convenient predicates to parse command-line options and start the application.

• run.pl
  Use this file to start the application. Normally it loads load.pl in silent-mode, and calls one of the starting predicates from load.pl.

• save.pl
  Use this file to create a saved-state of the application by loading load.pl and call qsave_program/2 to generate a saved-state with the proper options.

• debug.pl
  Loads the program for debugging. In addition to loading load.pl this file defines rules for portray/1 to modify printing rules for complex terms and customisation rules for the debugger and editing environment. It may start some of these tools.