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Estimated hours taken: 0.1 doc/faq.texi: doc/library.texi: doc/reference_manual.texi: doc/transition_guide.texi: doc/user_guide.texi: Comment out the @direntry and @dircategory commands. They were not needed (since they weren't actually being used -- only the corresponding commands in mercury.info were being used), and caused problems for the HTML version, because the current version of texi2html that we have does not yet implement those new TexInfo commands. They also caused some problems due to many of our machines having older versions of `makeinfo' which don't support the new commands yet either.
116 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
116 lines
4.6 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 --- texi2html doesn't support the @dir commands yet
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@c @dircategory The Mercury Programming Language
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@c @direntry
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@c * Mercury Library: (mercury_library). The Mercury Library Reference Manual.
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@c @end direntry
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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) 1995-1999 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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