4.27.2.1 Arithmetic types

SWI-Prolog defines the following numeric types:

• integer
  If SWI-Prolog is built using the GNU multiple precision arithmetic library (GMP), integer arithmetic is unbounded, which means that the size of integers is limited by available memory only. Without GMP, SWI-Prolog integers are 64-bits, regardless of the native integer size of the platform. The type of integer support can be detected using the Prolog flags bounded, min_integer and max_integer. As the use of GMP is default, most of the following descriptions assume unbounded integer arithmetic.

  Internally, SWI-Prolog has three integer representations. Small integers (defined by the Prolog flag max_tagged_integer) are encoded directly. Larger integers are represented as 64-bit values on the global stack. Integers that do not fit in 64 bits are represented as serialised GNU MPZ structures on the global stack.

• rational number
  Rational numbers (Q) are quotients of two integers. Rational arithmetic is only provided if GMP is used (see above). Rational numbers are currently not supported by a Prolog type. They are represented by the compound term rdiv(N,M). Rational numbers that are returned from is/2 are canonical, which means M is positive and N and M have no common divisors. Rational numbers are introduced in the computation using the rational/1, rationalize/1 or the rdiv/2 (rational division) function. Using the same functor for rational division and for representing rational numbers allows for passing rational numbers between computations as well as for using format/3 for printing.

  In the long term, it is likely that rational numbers will become atomic as well as a subtype of number. User code that creates or inspects the rdiv(M,N) terms will not be portable to future versions. Rationals are created using one of the functions mentioned above and inspected using rational/3.

• float
  Floating point numbers are represented using the C type double. On most of today's platforms these are 64-bit IEEE floating point numbers.

Arithmetic functions that require integer arguments accept, in addition to integers, rational numbers with (canonical) denominator `1'. If the required argument is a float the argument is converted to float. Note that conversion of integers to floating point numbers may raise an overflow exception. In all other cases, arguments are converted to the same type using the order below.

integer -> rational number -> floating point number