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120 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
120 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
\input texinfo
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@setfilename mercury_library.info
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@settitle The Mercury Library Reference Manual
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@c @ignore
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@ifinfo
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@format
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START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
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* Mercury Library: (mercury_library). The Mercury Library Reference Manual
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END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
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@end format
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@end ifinfo
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@c @end ignore
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@c @smallbook
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@c @cropmarks
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@finalout
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@setchapternewpage off
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@ifinfo
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This file documents the Mercury standard library.
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Copyright (C) 1995-1997 The University of Melbourne.
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Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
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this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
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are preserved on all copies.
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@ignore
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Permission is granted to process this file through Tex and print the
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results, provided the printed document carries copying permission
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notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
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(this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
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@end ignore
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Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
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manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that
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the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
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permission notice identical to this one.
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Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
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into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions.
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@end ifinfo
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@titlepage
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@title The Mercury Library Reference Manual
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@c @author Fergus Henderson
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@c @author Thomas Conway
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@c @author Zoltan Somogyi
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@page
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@vskip 0pt plus 1filll
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Copyright @copyright{} 1995-1997 The University of Melbourne.
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Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
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this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
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are preserved on all copies.
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Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
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manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that
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the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
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permission notice identical to this one.
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Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
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into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions.
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@end titlepage
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@page
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@c ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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@ifinfo
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@node Top,,, (mercury)
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@top Mercury Library Reference Manual
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@end ifinfo
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The Mercury standard library contains a variety of modules which we
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hope may be of general usefulness. If you write a module that would
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be useful to others, and you would like us to include it as part of
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the Mercury standard library, please let us know.
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The following documentation is simply the interface parts to those
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modules, automatically extracted from the source code. Some of the
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library modules are not very well documented; we apologize.
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For many of the modules in the standard library, we have not
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yet had enough experience using them to be confident that the
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current interface is satisfactory; it is likely that the interfaces to
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many of the modules in the standard library will change somewhat in
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future releases of the Mercury system. Some modules are rather
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experimental modules that may even be removed in future releases.
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Of course, we wouldn't make changes gratuitously, but at the
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current time, preserving 100% backwards compatibility would
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be disadvantageous in the long run.
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To help you protect yourself from depending on modules that are likely
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to change, each module has a comment ``stability: low/medium/high'' at
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the top which gives an indication of the likely stability of the
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interface to that module. For modules whose stability is ``high'', new
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functionality may be added to the interface, but we envisage very few
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if any changes to the interface of the sort that might break existing
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code. For modules whose stability is ``medium'', we expect that
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changes are more likely. For modules whose stability is ``low'', such
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changes are highly likely. If you want to minimize the possibility of
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your programs requiring modification to work with new releases of the
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Mercury system, we recommend that if possible you use only those
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modules whose stability is described as either ``medium to high'' or
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``high''.
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Sometime in the near future, we will implement module qualifiers,
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and then all of the double-underscores will be replaced with module
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qualifiers, so that e.g. @samp{list__append} will become @samp{list:append}
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(and in fact the @samp{list:} prefix will become optional).
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At that time, some reorganization of the library may occur.
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When this change happens, we will provide users with a tool to
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automate conversion of existing programs.
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@menu
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@include library-menu.texi
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@end menu
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@include library-chapters.texi
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@contents
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@bye
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