Foreign Language Interfaces for Prolog: A Terse Survey

The availability of good foreign language interfaces is fundamental for the interoperability of different programming languages. While this observation is true for any language, it is especially important for non-mainstream languages such as Prolog, since they are likely to be discarded when shortcomings of the interfaces suggest the adoption of just one implementation language. In this paper we review some existing Prolog foreign language interfaces, trying to highlight both the important characteristics they share and the features that distinguish them from one another. We argue that even a basic, but standard Prolog foreign language interface could significantly contribute to increasing the adoption of Prolog for those subsystems where it is ``the right language’‘. Finally we suggest which steps could be taken in this direction.