SWI-Prolog -- Manual

11.4.3.1 Testing the type of a term

int PL_term_type(term_t)

Obtain the type of a term, which should be a term returned by one of the other interface predicates or passed as an argument. The function returns the type of the Prolog term. The type identifiers are listed below. Note that the extraction functions PL_get_*() also validate the type and thus the two sections below are equivalent.

        if ( PL_is_atom(t) )
        { char *s;

          PL_get_atom_chars(t, &s);
          ...;
        }

or

        char *s;
        if ( PL_get_atom_chars(t, &s) )
        { ...;
        }

Version 7 added PL_NIL, PL_BLOB, PL_LIST_PAIR and PL_DICT. Older versions classify PL_NIL and PL_BLOB as PL_ATOM, PL_LIST_PAIR as PL_TERM and do not have dicts.

`PL_VARIABLE`	A variable or attributed variable
`PL_ATOM`	A Prolog atom
`PL_NIL`	The constant `[]`
`PL_BLOB`	A blob (see section 11.4.7.2)
`PL_STRING`	A string (see section 5.2)
`PL_INTEGER`	A integer
`PL_FLOAT`	A floating point number
`PL_TERM`	A compound term
`PL_LIST_PAIR`	A list cell (`[H\|T]`)
`PL_DICT`	A dict (see section 5.4))

The functions PL_is_<type> are an alternative to PL_term_type(). The test PL_is_variable(term) is equivalent to PL_term_type(term) == PL_VARIABLE, but the first is considerably faster. On the other hand, using a switch over PL_term_type() is faster and more readable then using an if-then-else using the functions below. All these functions return either TRUE or FALSE.

int PL_is_variable(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is a variable.
int PL_is_ground(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is a ground term. See also ground/1. This function is cycle-safe.
int PL_is_atom(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is an atom.
int PL_is_string(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is a string.
int PL_is_integer(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is an integer.
int PL_is_float(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is a float.
int PL_is_callable(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is a callable term. See callable/1 for details.
int PL_is_compound(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is a compound term.
int PL_is_functor(term_t, functor_t): Returns non-zero if term is compound and its functor is functor. This test is equivalent to PL_get_functor(), followed by testing the functor, but easier to write and faster.
int PL_is_list(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is a compound term using the list constructor or the list terminator. See also PL_is_pair() and PL_skip_list().
int PL_is_pair(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is a compound term using the list constructor. See also PL_is_list() and PL_skip_list().
int PL_is_atomic(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is atomic (not variable or compound).
int PL_is_number(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is an integer or float.
int PL_is_acyclic(term_t): Returns non-zero if term is acyclic (i.e. a finite tree).