[mercury-users] Queries for clarifing...

[Ralph Becket]

Noel  Pinto, Monday, 14 October 2002:
> On Mon, 14 Oct 2002 Fergus Henderson wrote :
> >
> >I have no idea what you're trying to do, so I can't tell you 
> >what the correct syntax for it would be.
> >
> I just wanted to figure out what the correct syntax for Function 
> Rule and Fact and, Predicate Rule and Fact.
> 
> I had written some mails about it. I just wanted to make sure 
> whether I am on the right track. In the last mail you mentioned it 
> to be wrong, and thats why I want to know what would be the exact 
> syntx for them as I am not on the right track.

The first part of the reference manual deals with syntax.  It is
generally held to be very clear.  The seventh and eighth subsections (a
paragraph apiece) are titled "Facts" and "Rules" respectively.  What
parts of those subsections do you find confusing?

You can solve most of your problems by first stating (to yourself)
clearly, and in detail, what it is you want to achieve, then finding the
relevant section(s) of the manual to tell you what Mercury code to
write.

You can try compiling code yourself to find out if it is syntactically
well formed or not.  Much effort has been put into making the compiler's
error messages easy to understand.

If you want good feedback from the mailing lists, you must be able to
tell us in plain, unambiguous terms
- what you are trying to achieve;
- what you have tried and what error the compiler reported; and
- why you thought your attempt should have worked.

Without this information it is very difficult for us to work out exactly
what your problem is, especially if it seems your questions should
already have straightforward answers in the reference manual.  We admit
that *parts* of the reference manual may be difficult to understand from a
newcomer's point of view, but that is purely because the point of the
reference manual is to be complete and unambiguous rather than an
introductory text.

Cheers,

Ralph
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