How to run `gprolog` under an Emacs sub-process shell?

Question

I'd like to run the gprolog interactive interpreter in an Emacs sub-process shell (started with M-x shell).

The interactive interpret starts without a problem, but it does not respond to some keystrokes as expected.

---

To illustrate the problem, I first show a simple interaction as it occurs when I run gprolog in a "top-level shell" (i.e. not one running as a subprocess of Emacs).

(In the excerpts below, please regard the delimiters << and >> as "markup" to indicate the text I type. In the actual interaction, I don't type any << or >> sequences. Neither do I type the ▮ characters, which I'm using only to indicate the position of point. With the exception of the text enclosed by <<...>> and ▮, all text shown in the excerpts below is produced by gprolog.)

Staring from top-level shell

First I type the following query:

| ?- <<member(X, [a,b,c]).>>▮

Then I hit the Enter key (shown below as [RET]):

| ?- <<member(X, [a,b,c]).[RET]>>

X = a ? ▮

Now I hit ; once:

| ?- <<member(X, [a,b,c]).[RET]>>

X = a ? <<;>>

X = b ? ▮

Note that pressing ; was all that I had to do to elicit the next response from gprolog.

Finally I hit ; twice more, thereby exhausting the list of remaining results:

| ?- <<member(X, [a,b,c]).[RET]>>

X = a ? <<;>>

X = b ? <<;>>

X = c ? <<;>>

no
| ?- ▮

Staring from Emacs sub-process shell

Next I show what an attempt to run the same interaction in an instance of gprolog invoked from an Emacs sub-process shell.

Up to this point, it looks the same as before:

| ?- <<member(X, [a,b,c]).[RET]>>

X = a ? ▮

But now, if when I press ;, the semicolon character gets inserted, but gprolog does not respond:

| ?- <<member(X, [a,b,c]).[RET]>>
X = a ? <<;>>▮

If now I hit Enter, gprolog (basically) prints out one more result and terminates the query (prematurely):

| ?- <<member(X, [a,b,c]).[RET]>>

X = a ? <<;[RET]>>
;

X = b ? 

yes
| ?- ▮

---

I encountered a similar problem with swipl (Swiss-Prolog), but found that starting it with the -tty flag made it usable under an Emacs sub-process shell (though the interface behaves a little differently).

I did not find anything like swipl's -tty flag for gprolog.

Answer 1

The best way to run an interactive prolog session under Emacs is to use M-x run-prolog. It includes the code needed to send single characters at a time, rather than the line-based interaction of M-x shell.