[daveplummermd]

Guys
I have added a text file as a resource in a package.
How do I access the text contents of that file?


Thanks in advance

dave

[Thomas Linder Puls]

Adding a text file (and many other kinds of files) does not have any influence on the resulting program (the files will not be embedded in the program in any form).

The only difference it makes is that the file is present in the project tree, and if you double click it there it will open in an editor.

This can be handy for many reasons, you could ofor example have a to-do list, or if you have some files that will be used at run time you can manage them in the IDE, …


By the way, the image you have added looks strange (I think it is because it is not publicly accessible).

[Martin Meyer]

Maybe the #bininclude compiler directive could help you. By it your text file can be included as a binary. The binary can be converted then to a string.

To demonstrate it take for example main.pro as the text file. It is coded in UTF-8 with a leading byte order mark of 3 bytes. Create a new console application project and replace the code in main.pro by

Code: Select all

implement main
 
constants
    text8 : string8 = uncheckedConvert(string8, #bininclude(@"main.pro")).
 
clauses
    run() :-
        Str8 = string8::fromPosition(text8, 3), %remove BOM
        Str = string8::fromUtf8(Str8), %convert to UTF-16
        stdIO::write(Str).
 
end implement main
 
goal
    console::runUtf8(main::run).

[Thomas Linder Puls]

Actually, the next Visual Prolog version will have a #stringinclude directive similar to #bininclude but resulting in a string.

Using #bininclude you cannot be sure that text8 is null-terminated. Therefore this code is safer:

Code: Select all

implement main
 
constants
    text8_bin : binary = #bininclude(@"main.pro").
 
clauses
    run() :-
        Len = binary::getSize(text8_bin),
        Text8 = uncheckedConvert(string8, text8_bin),
        Str8 = string8::fromPosition(Text8, 3), %remove BOM
        Str = string8::fromUtf8(Str8, Len - 3), % convert to UTF-16
        stdio::write(Str).
 
end implement main

[Martin Meyer]

I supposed the constant in my example is null terminated, because the Language Reference says

When creating a binary constant the compiler adds the EOS symbol immediately after this constant, which makes safe the directive usages like this:

Code: Select all

constants
    text : string = uncheckedConvert(string, #bininclude("text.txt")).
    % Here text.txt is a text file, which is normally not text zero terminated

[Thomas Linder Puls]

OK, I had forgotten that we add such a null-character, so your version is fine.

Actually, we discussed this quite recently in the team and considered adding a null-char after a #bininclude, so we must all have forgotten that such one is already added . Anyways, we decided that #stringinclude would be a better feature .

[daveplummermd]

looking forward to it. Good addition.

[Harrison Pratt]

I use an interface (.i) file tor embed large strings in an application. The string constant syntax7z is globally visible throughout the application. A rudimentary example is below.

Code: Select all

interface aTest
    open core
constants
    syntax7z : string =
"Usage: 7z <command> [<switches>...] <archive_name> [<file_names>...]
 
<Commands>
  a : Add files to archive
  b : Benchmark
  d : Delete files from archive
... etc.
".
end interface aTest

Code: Select all

%-- somewhere in the application
stdio::write("\n", syntax7z ),
... etc.