SWI-Prolog 8.4.0 Reference Manual: Section 2.7

## 2.7 Online Help

### 2.7.1 library(help): Text based manual

This module provides help/1 and apropos/1 that give help on a topic or searches the manual for relevant topics.

By default the result of help/1 is sent through a pager such as `less`. This behaviour is controlled by the following:

- The Prolog flag help_pager, which can be set to one of the following values:
  false
    Never use a pager.
  default
    Use default behaviour. This tries to determine whether Prolog is running interactively in an environment that allows for a pager. If so it examines the environment variable `PAGER` or otherwise tries to find the `less` program.
  Callable
    A Callable term is interpreted as `program_name(Arg, ...)`. For example, `less('-r')` would be the default. Note that the program name can be an absolute path if single quotes are used.

[det]help
[det]help(+What)
  Show help for What. What is a term that describes the `topics(s)` to give help for. Notations for What are:
  Atom
    This ambiguous form is most commonly used and shows all matching documents. For example:

        ?- help(append).

  Name `/` Arity
    Give help on predicates with matching Name/Arity. Arity may be unbound.
  Name `//` Arity
    Give help on the matching DCG rule (non-terminal)
  f(Name/Arity)
    Give help on the matching Prolog arithmetic functions.
  c(Name)
    Give help on the matching C interface function
  section(Label)
    Show the section from the manual with matching Label.

  If an exact match fails this predicates attempts fuzzy matching and, when successful, display the results headed by a warning that the matches are based on fuzzy matching.

  If possible, the results are sent through a pager such as the `less` program. This behaviour is controlled by the Prolog flag `help_pager`. See section level documentation.

  See also
    apropos/1 for searching the manual names and summaries.
[semidet,multifile]show_html_hook(+HTML:string)
  Hook called to display the extracted HTML document. If this hook fails the HTML is rendered to the console as plain text using html_text/2.
[det]apropos(+Query)
  Print objects from the manual whose name or summary match with Query. Query takes one of the following forms:
  Type`:`Text
    Find objects matching Text and filter the results by Type. Type matching is a case intensitive prefix match. Defined types are `section`, `cfunction`, `function`, `iso_predicate`, `swi_builtin_predicate`, `library_predicate`, `dcg` and aliases `chapter`, `arithmetic`, `c_function`, `predicate`, `nonterminal` and `non_terminal`. For example:

        ?- apropos(c:close).
        ?- apropos(f:min).

  Text
    Text is broken into tokens. A topic matches if all tokens appear in the name or summary of the topic. Matching is case insensitive. Results are ordered depending on the quality of the match.

### 2.7.2 library(explain): Describe Prolog Terms

The `library(explain)` describes prolog-terms. The most useful functionality is its cross-referencing function.

    ?- explain(subset(_,_)).
    "subset(_, _)" is a compound term
        from 2-th clause of lists:subset/2
        Referenced from 46-th clause of prolog_xref:imported/3
        Referenced from 68-th clause of prolog_xref:imported/3
    lists:subset/2 is a predicate defined in
        /staff/jan/lib/pl-5.6.17/library/lists.pl:307
        Referenced from 2-th clause of lists:subset/2
        Possibly referenced from 2-th clause of lists:subset/2

Note that PceEmacs can jump to definitions and gxref/0 can be used for an overview of dependencies.

[det]explain(@Term)
  Give an explanation on Term. The argument may be any Prolog data object. If the argument is an atom, a term of the form `Name/Arity` or a term of the form `Module:Name/Arity`, explain/1 describes the predicate as well as possible references to it. See also gxref/0.
[nondet]explain(@Term, -Explanation)
  True when Explanation is an explanation of Term.