🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <783@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>, I replied to article
<1197@kulcs.kulcs.uucp>, by bimandre@kulcs.uucp (Andre Marien)
[signed by Andre Marien and Bart Demoen both].
The topic was what read/1 and get0/1 should do at the end of a stream.

I thought you might be interested to know what the BSI committee say.

In document PS/236, "Draft minutes, Prolog Built-In Predicates meeting,
10 December 1987", we find

	4 Design criterion

	<name deleted> suggested: "Whenever possible, a predicate with
	a side effect should always succeed and never instantiate
	variables."

This of course rules get0/1 and read/1 out entirely.  That may not be
what <name deleted> _meant_, but it _is_ what the minutes say he _said_.
As far as I can tell, the real intent is to rule out retract/1, which
is disliked because it unifies its argument with the thing you removed.
The minutes show that Paul Chung proposed naming the standard clause-
removing predicate delete/1 instead of retract/1.  Good on yer, mate!
This should not be construed as endorsement of the name delete/1, but
as praise for Paul Chung's good standardisation manners.