11.7 Example of Using the Foreign Interface

Below is an example showing all stages of the declaration of a foreign predicate that transforms atoms possibly holding uppercase letters into an atom only holding lowercase letters. Figure 10 shows the C source file, figure 11 illustrates compiling and loading of foreign code.

/*  Include file depends on local installation */
#include <SWI-Prolog.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ctype.h>

foreign_t
pl_lowercase(term_t u, term_t l)
{ char *copy;
  char *s, *q;
  int rval;

  if ( !PL_get_atom_chars(u, &s) )
    return PL_warning("lowercase/2: instantiation fault");
  copy = malloc(strlen(s)+1);

  for( q=copy; *s; q++, s++)
    *q = (isupper(*s) ? tolower(*s) : *s);
  *q = '\0';

  rval = PL_unify_atom_chars(l, copy);
  free(copy);

  return rval;
}

install_t
install()
{ PL_register_foreign("lowercase", 2, pl_lowercase, 0);
}

% gcc -I/usr/local/lib/swipl-\plversion/include -fpic -c lowercase.c
% gcc -shared -o lowercase.so lowercase.o
% swipl
Welcome to SWI-Prolog (...)
...

1 ?- load_foreign_library(lowercase).
true.

2 ?- lowercase('Hello World!', L).
L = 'hello world!'.