The MP library interface for SWI-Prolog, version 1.4
====================================================

Version 1.4
-----------

	* Fit with package building of current SWI-Prolog
	* Improved gmp library detection
	* Avoid a conflict handling portray.

Version 1.3
-----------

This package contains the SWI-Prolog interface   to the GMP library (GNU
Multiple Precision arithmetic library). GMP   allows  for arbitrary size
integers, arbitrary precision floats, and rational number arithmetic. In
addition,  this  package  includes  complex  arithmetic  added  to  GMP.
Whenever you run into number representation  problems in SWI-Prolog, you
can use this package. MP integers  are   very  useful as arbitrary sized
bitvectors too!

To install MP, first install the GMP 3.0.1 library available from

http://www.swox.com/gmp/

Then, configure the package using ./configure. If  the GMP library is at
a  different  location,  add   --with-gmp-include=  and  --with-gmp-lib=
options to ./configure (see configure --help).

Now run `make' to build the  library  or   `make  plmp'  to  build a new
SWI-Prolog with MP built-in. `make install' installs the mp.pl and mp.so
libraries in the default SWI-Prolog.

`make' may not succeed  in  building   the  library,  depending  on your
system. In that case, use `make plmp'  to create a new Prolog executable
with MP.

The file mpdemo.pl contains a short demo.   You  can test the library by
loading this file and typing ?- mp_demo.

The arithmetic primitives related to  MP   are  implemented  in mp.c and
brief descriptions of the primitives are provided in this file.

The file mp.pl contains  additional   arithmetic  predicates,  including
mp_is/2 that implements is/2 with MP   arithmetic.  See mp_is/2 in mp.pl
for a description of  the  syntax  of   expressions  and  the  types  of
operators and functions. Big integers  and   floats  can be specified as
atoms or strings, e.g. "1234567890987654321". For   strings to work, you
need to set style_check(+string) first.

The mp.tar contains:

.plrc		Set paths for local testing
Makefile.in	Makefile template
README		This file
acconfig.h	autoconf spec file
config.h.in	config.h template generated by autoheader
configure*	configure script generated by autoconf
configure.in	autoconf spec file
install-sh*	fall-back install program
main.c		the new SWI-Prolog main
mp.c		the MP implementation
mp.pl		additional MP module
mpdemo.pl	short demo
pl-mp.h		the MP header file

============================================================================
Copyright (c) 1999 Robert A. van Engelen, Florida State University
engelen@cs.fsu.edu. All rights reserved.
Thanks to Jan Wielemaker for the installation and configuration files
============================================================================
