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![]() | Site and personal initialisation files |
On startup, SWI-Prolog reads both site initialisation and personal initialisation files. Both can be controlled explicitly using commandline options (-F base for site, and -f base for personal initialisation).
The site-initialisation file is located in the SWI-Prolog home
directory. Its name is deduced from the commandname by taking the
leading alphanumerical characters, followed by the extension .rc
.
Using default installation this implies swipl.rc for the Unix version
and swipl-win.rc for the Windows GUI version.
If XPCE is installed, it is activated through the above named system default file.
The personal initialisation file depends on version and OS:
init.pl
and resides in a directory
swi-prolog
below the the XDG config home. On Unix the
default XDG config home is ~/.config
. On Windows it
is the directory provided by win_folder/2 on appdata
.
These files are available using the file_search_path/2 alias
user_app_config
as well as the deprecated aliases
user_profile
and app_preferences
.swiplrc
on Unix (.plrc
for really old
versions) and swipl.ini
on Windows (pl.ini
for really old
versions). The file resides in the user's home (Unix) or in the
appdata
directory (Windows).
These files are available using the file_search_path/2 alias
user_profile
.
In plwin.exe, the personal initialisation file is accessible through the Settings menu. On first use, it copies a default file with some commented commonly used customization options. The same behaviour is also available from the PceEmacs menu Edit/Prolog preferences.
The -s file command line option is often used on Unix systems to
load and start applications using a single command. This option can also
be used to create PrologScript files. Recent versions interpret a
*.pl
file on the command line as a source file. When used in a
terminal, a session is typically started as
swipl file.pl