Re: How to work with dots? When are they read as `./3` when as parts of an atom?

To clarify and correct my question: I'm mainly curious what the decisive
factors are for whether the unquoted *a.b* gets read as an atom and when
it's an operator expecting the *a *to be a dict.

Also, I should note that I made the mistake of adding backquotes around *a.b
*to the quote from the SWI download page. It should have read

> Unquoted atoms may contain internal dots. E.g., a.b is an atom.

Thanks again!


On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Shon Feder <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi, all,
>
> I skimmed through the recent mailing list subjects and didn't see this
> addressed elsewhere. But I am sorry if I overlooked an existing discussion!
>
> I just fired up the newest development version, and am running *SWI-Prolog
> (Multi-threaded, 64 bits, Version 7.1.8)* on OS X 9.1.
>
> According to the note on the page for the latest development release,
>
> > Unquoted atoms may contain internal dots. E.g., `a.b` is an atom.
>
> But the dot seems to treated exclusively as the operator for functions on
> dicts:
>
>     ?- atom(a.b).
>     ERROR: Type error: `dict' expected, found `a' (an atom)
>
> Same thing if I try and use it as a functor:
>
>     ?- compound(a.b(X)).
>     ERROR: Type error: `dict' expected, found `a' (an atom)
>
> Can anyone help clarify for my sake?
>
> Many thanks!
>
> Shon
>
> *P.S. I'm seeing some buggy interface elements on the new (much prettier!)
> SWI site. Is this a known issue, or would it be helpful for me detail what
> I'm seeing?*
>
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