mercury/NEWS

NEWS for Mercury release 0.6
----------------------------

* We now provide some support for functional syntax.

  Functions can be declared with `:- func' declarations,
  and defined using equations or conditional equations,
  in a similar manner to the way predicates are declared
  with `:- pred' declarations and defined using facts and rules.
  Terms can contain function calls and if-then-elses.
  For example:

	:- func sum(list(int)) = int.	
	sum([]) = 0.				% unconditional equations
	sum([X|Xs]) = X + sum(Xs).		% using function calls

	:- func max(int, int) = int.
	max(X, Y) = Max :-			% conditional equation
		(X >= Y -> Max = X ; Max = Y).

	:- func min(int, int) = int.
	min(X, Y) = (if X >= Y then X else Y).	% unconditional equation
						% using if-then-else expression

  By default, functions are assumed to have a single det mode with
  all arguments input and the result output, but you can override
  this default by supplying explicit mode declarations; for example,
  this allows you to use functions in a backwards mode to compute the
  function inverse. 

  Zero-arity functions can be used to define constants.

	:- func pi = float.
	pi = 3.14159265359.

  We also support higher-order functions and function lambda expressions.
  See the Mercury language reference manual for details.
  
  The support for functions is not quite complete; there is one minor
  limitation and one major one.  The minor limitation is that the C
  interface does not yet support Mercury functions.  (Fortunately there
  is an easy work-around - since the C interface does support predicates,
  you can just make your Mercury function call a Mercury predicate.)
  The major limitation is that there is currently no support for
  debugging programs using functional syntax; obviously using a Prolog
  system won't work, since Prolog doesn't support functions.

* We now support overloading of predicates (and functions) with the
  same name and arity defined in different modules. 
  
  Previously, an explicit module qualifier was required to resolve the
  ambiguity; now, the typechecker will use the types to resolve the
  ambiguity, if possible.  (Note that you cannot define more than one
  predicate with the same name and arity in the same module.  Allowing
  that would add considerable complexity to the syntax, and would be
  of arguable utility, so we do not anticipate lifting that restriction.)

* We have removed the limitations on the number and order of arguments in
  higher-order predicate calls.

* Support for floating point is much improved.
  
  The above-mentioned support for functional syntax and overloading
  have enabled major improvements in the interface used for floating
  point.  You can now use the usual arithmetic and comparison
  operators, rather than the cumbersome builtin_float_plus (etc.)
  predicates that were used previously.  We have also improved code
  generation for floating point operations, by avoiding many
  unnecessary boxing/unboxing operations, and by making the
  `--static-ground-terms' optimization apply also to floating point
  constants.  These two optimizations improved performance on the
  realistic "pseudoknot" benchmark by nearly a factor of four.
  (There's still plenty of room for performance improvements, however.)

* We now support reverse mode arithmetic.

  This means that a goal such as A is B + C can be used not only to compute
  A from B and C, but also to compute B from A and C, or to compute C from
  A and B.

* We have added some new compiler options to simplify the choice of which
  optimization options to enable.

  - You can now use `-O<n>' to select an optimization level between 0 and 5.

  - You can now use `--optimize-space' to select optimization for space,
    instead of optimization for time (which is the default).

* We have continued to improve the compiler's optimization.

  As well as the above-mentioned improvements to float-point code generation:

  - We now specialize calls to higher-order predicates within the same module
    in the case when the higher-order arguments have known values.
    This optimization is enabled by the `--optimize-higher-order' option.

  - We now specialize calls to predicates within the same module which have
    unused arguments.  This often happens for polymorphic predicates, since
    the compiler introduces type_info arguments which are often unused.
    This optimization is enabled by the `--optimize-unused-args' option.

  - The --inlining option now governs the settings of three separate options.
    One, --inline-simple, reproduces the previous behavior of --inlining:
    it inlines procedures whose definition is simple (e.g. a conjunction of
    builtins). Another, --inline-single-use, tells the compiler to inline
    all procedures that are called exactly once. The compiler can also
    inline procedures called more than once as long as they are not too
    big; the argument of the option --inline-threshold sets a limit
    on the size of the procedure definition (roughly in terms of the number
    of logical connectives it has) multiplied by the number of calls to
    the predicate.

  - There's a new option `--optimize-dead-proc' option to eliminate unused
    procedures within a module.  This is useful even if the original source
    code didn't contain any unused procedures, since inlining and code
    specialization can make a procedure unused even if there original source
    had calls to that procedure.

  - There's a new option `--split-c-files' which causes the compiler to put
    each C function in its own C file, so that the linker can link in only
    what is used, and a new Mmake target `foo.split' for
    building a version of `foo' compiled with `--split-c-files'.
    (`--split-c-files' has much the same effect as `--optimize-dead-proc',
    except that it works globally, not just within a module.)
    On platforms for which we don't support shared libraries, installing
    a split version of the Mercury library fixes the problem of dumb Unix
    linkers dragging in nearly the entire library even if most of it is
    unused, and so reduces the size of a hello world program from >400k
    to around 120k.

  - The code generator generates special code for dense switches in
    which all the output variables are constant terms.  Instead of
    generating dense jump tables, it puts the answers in static constant
    arrays, and uses retrieves them using array indexing, avoiding
    an expensive jump and reducing code size.

  - The code generator now emits better code for constructing deeply nested
    terms, and avoids some unnecessary register shuffling.

  - The value numbering optimization now processes code sequences
    containing several heap allocations.

  - The `--pred-value-number' option now works.  If it is given, and
    value numbering notices that a value is available from a location
    that is faster to access than the one from which another code
    sequence retrieves the value, this other code sequence will be
    reoptimized taking this into account.

* We now support a C-to-Mercury interface. (ie. we allow C to call Mercury).
  This is achieved by the pragma(export, ...) declaration. There is the 
  restriction that the program must start in Mercury, but the C code that is
  called may itself call Mercury.
  ( XXX We don't handle strings and floats properly).

* Some work has been done on integrating constraints into the language. It is
  fairly untested, but works on a simple interface with CLP(R). In a compilation
  grade ending in .cnstr, eg. asm_fast.gc.cnstr, macros are emitted into the
  generated code to allow a solver to backtrack. These are defined in
  runtime/mercury_solver_backtrack.h. This should be more complete in a future
  release.

* We have added a little bit of inline assembler code for the Alpha so
  that we can support the use of gcc non-local gotos and asm labels.
  This improved both code size and execution speed for the Alpha port
  by about 20-25%.

* We have ported the Mercury implementation to RS/6000 systems running AIX.
  (Thanks to Andreas Kuehlmann.)

* We have made a few changes to the Mercury standard library.
  The changes are listed here, but see the library reference manual for
  details such as documentation on the new predicates.

  - The getopt library is now more flexible.  It can handle command
    line switches (such as `-O2') that affect the values of many
    options, and it can handle long options that specify a value after
    an equal sign, in the GNU style (e.g. `--optimization-level=2').

  - We have added a few new predicates using higher order facilities:
	list__map/3, list__filter/3, list__filter/4, list__foldl/4,
	list__foldr/4, list__sort/4 and list__merge/4 in list.m and
	maybe_pred/3 in std_util.m. 

  - There are a couple of new all-solutions predicates in std_util.m:
    solutions_set/2 and unsorted_solutions/2. 

  - We have added some additional predicates for handling association lists:
    assoc_list__search/3 and assoc_list__remove/4.

  - There are quite a few changes to the graph module.  The interface has been
    made more consistent with the rest of the library.  The predicate
    graph__lookup_node/3 has been replaced by two predicates:
    graph__search_node/3 which is nondet and returns all the nodes with
    matching data, and graph__find_matching_nodes/3 which is det and
    returns all the nodes with matching data.

  - We have renamed the varset__lookup predicates to varset__search in order to
    conform to our general naming convention.

  - We have removed the (undocumented) library predicate list__map_maybe/3.