Interactive testing of a module in ediprolog

[dcnorris]

The interactive, inline testing supported by ediprolog helps me to work both faster and more safely. But when developing a module, to avoid existence_errors I find it necessary to comment-out the module declaration. (I suppose this makes the module look temporarily like a 'top-level script'?)

Is this something inherent to Prolog modules, such that working around it would be considered harmful? Do other people have a smoother workaround? I can imagine a small change to ediprolog — when invoking C-u C-u F10, strip out any module declaration before sending to Scryer — that would probably work great for me. But I want to hold off developing this, in case I am overlooking a better idea.

[triska]

Personally, I tend to temporarily add a module prefix in such cases; we can invoke any predicate (i.e., also those that are not exported) by module-qualifying it.

Example:

?- lists:with_var(X, Y).
   Y = X-_A.

I am also interested to see if there are other suggestions. At least adding such module-qualifications is more localized than jumping around in the file and changing other parts.

[dcnorris]

This proof-of-concept mod to ediprolog-consult implements my intended behavior:

   (let ((start (if (and transient-mark-mode mark-active)
                    (region-beginning) (point-min)))
         (end (if (and transient-mark-mode mark-active)
                  (region-end) (point-max))))
-    (write-region start end ediprolog-temp-file nil 'silent))
+    (if new-process ; C-u C-u F10 ~~> intent to load module to 'user'
+      (let ((oldbuf (current-buffer)))
+        (with-temp-buffer
+          (insert-buffer-substring oldbuf start end)
+          (goto-char (point-min))
+          (when (re-search-forward "^:- module(\\w*[^[]*[[][^]]*])\\." nil t)
+            (replace-match "/*\\&*/")
+            (message "Commented module declaration for loading to user"))
+          (write-file ediprolog-temp-file)))
+      (write-region start end ediprolog-temp-file nil 'silent)))
   (set-process-filter ediprolog-process 'ediprolog-consult-filter)
   (ediprolog-remember-interruption
    (ediprolog-wait-for-prompt-after
     (ediprolog-send-string (format "['%s'].\n"
                                    (if (fboundp 'file-local-name)