SWIPrologprovide
SWI-Prologprovide is a directive used within SWI-Prolog programs to indicate that a particular module or predicate should be made available for use by other modules. It is part of the module system in SWI-Prolog, which helps in organizing code into logical units and managing dependencies. When a module is defined, it can export certain predicates, making them accessible to other programs that import that module. The provide/1 directive is typically used within the module definition to list the names of the predicates that are being exported. This allows other modules to explicitly state their reliance on these exported predicates. For instance, if a module named 'my_math' exports a predicate named 'add/3', the definition of 'my_math' might contain a directive like :- provide(add/3). Then, another module that wishes to use this 'add/3' predicate would import the 'my_math' module. The SWI-Prolog compiler uses this information to resolve predicate calls and ensure that all necessary code is loaded. It is a mechanism for managing the public interface of a module.
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