compare/3
Module: builtins
compare/3 — compares two terms in the standard order
FORMS
compare(Relation, TermL, TermR)
DESCRIPTION
TermL and TermR are compared according to the
[standard,order]
defined below. Relation is unified with an atom representing the result of the comparison. Relation is unified with:
= when TermL is identical to TermR
< when TermL is before TermR
> when TermL is after TermR
The [standard,order] provides a means to compare and sort general Prolog terms. The order is somewhat arbitrary in how it sorts terms of different types. For example, an atom is always “ less than “ a structure. Here ‘ s the entire order :
Variables < Numbers < Atoms < Structured Terms
[Variables] are compared according to their relative locations in the Prolog data areas. Usually a recently created variable will be greater than an older variable. However, the apparent age of a variable can change without notice during a computation; this makes using the comparison of uninstantiated (but not instantiated) variables extremely tricky.
[Numbers]
are ordered according to their signed magnitude. Integers and floating point values are ordered correctly, so compare/3 can be used to sort numbers.
[Atoms] are sorted by the ASCII order of their print names. If one atom is an initial substring of another, the longer atom will appear later in the standard order.
[Structured,terms]
are ordered first by arity, then by the ASCII order of their principal functor. If two terms have the same functor and arity, then compare/3 will recursively compare their arguments to determine the order of the two.
More precisely, if TermL and TermR are structured terms, then
TermL @< TermR holds if and only if :
the arity of TermL is less than the arity of TermR, or
TermL and TermR have the same arity, and the functor name of TermL precedes
the functor name of TermR in the standard order, or
TermL and TermR have the same arity and functor name,
and there is an integer N less than or equal to the arity of TermL such that for all i less than N,
the ith arguments of TermL and TermR are identical, and
the Nth argument of TermL precedes the Nth argument of TermR in the standard order.
EXAMPLES
The following examples show the use of compare/3 :
?- Myself=I, compare(=,Myself,I).
Myself=_4
I=_4
yes.
?- compare(>,100,99).
yes.
?- compare(<,boy,big(boy)).
yes.
The following example shows the way structures are compared :
?- compare(Order, and(a,b,c), and(a,b,a,b)).
Order='<'
yes.
This says that the structure
and(a, b, c)
comes after the structure
and(a, b, a, b)
in the standard order, because the second structure has a greater arity than the first.