3.1 Introduction
GNU Prolog offers two ways to execute a Prolog program:
- interpreting it using the GNU Prolog interactive interpreter.
- compiling it to a (machine-dependent) executable using the GNU Prolog
native-code compiler.
Running a program under the interactive interpreter allows the user to
list it and to make full use of the debugger on it (section 4).
Compiling a program to native code makes it possible to obtain a stand alone
executable, with a reduced size and optimized for speed. Running a Prolog
program compiled to native-code is around 3-5 times faster than running it
under the interpreter. However, it is not possible to make full use of
the debugger on a program compiled to native-code. Nor is it possible to list
the program. In general, it is preferable to run a program under the
interpreter for debugging and then use the native-code compiler to produce an
autonomous executable. It is also possible to combine these two modes by
producing an executable that contains some parts of the program (e.g.
already debugged predicates whose execution-time speed is crucial) and
interpreting the other parts under this executable. In that case, the
executable has the same facilities as the GNU Prolog interpreter but also
integrates the native-code predicates. This way to define a new enriched
interpreter is detailed later (section 3.4.5).
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Daniel Diaz
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