By default, SWI-Prolog is installed as `swipl'. The command line arguments of SWI-Prolog itself and its utility programs are documented using standard Unix man pages. SWI-Prolog is normally operated as an interactive application simply by starting the program:
$ swipl Welcome to SWI-Prolog ... ... 1 ?-
After starting Prolog, one normally loads a program into it using consult/1, which may be abbreviated by putting the name of the program file between square brackets. The following goal loads the file likes.pl containing clauses for the predicates likes/2 :
?- [likes]. true. ?-
Alternatively, the source file may be given as command line arguments:
$ swipl likes.pl Welcome to SWI-Prolog ... ... 1 ?-
After this point, Unix and Windows users unite, so if you are using Unix please continue at section 2.1.2.
After SWI-Prolog has been installed on a Windows system, the following important new things are available to the user:
swipl containing the executables,
libraries, etc., of the system. No files are installed outside this
directory..pl is associated with the program
swipl-win.exe. Opening a .pl file will cause
swipl-win.exe to start, change directory to the directory in
which the file to open resides, and load this file.
The normal way to start the likes.pl file mentioned in
section 2.1.1.1 is
by simply double-clicking this file in the Windows explorer.