Prolog programs sometimes need access to large sets of background
data. For example in the GRASP
project we need access to ontologies of art objects, a large lexicon and
translation dictionaries. Storage of such information as Prolog clauses
is not sufficiently efficient in terms of the memory requirements.
The table package outlined in this document allows for easy access of
large structured files. The package uses binary search if possible and
linear search for queries that cannot use more efficient algorithms
without building additional index tables. Caching is achieved using the
file-to-memory maps supported by many modern operating systems.
The following sections define the interface predicates for the
package.
Section 4 provides an example to access
the Unix password file.
