Echo in prolog with single print

Question

In order to learn a bit more of Prolog, I implemented the echo command for SWI-Prolog.

I want a correct implementation, that is, it satisfies the following requirements:

• It makes only one I/O call so that messages will not be garbled if multiple processes write to the same file.
• If it is called without arguments, it just prints an empty line (newline).
• It does not print any additional spaces. Only spaces between the arguments. No leading space. No trailing space.

Here's the Prolog code that I came up with.

main(Argv) :-
    echo('', Argv).

echo(S, []) :-
    string_concat(S, '\n', S1),
    write(S1).
echo(S, [Last]) :-
    string_concat(S, Last, S1),
    echo(S1, []).
echo(S, [H|T]) :-
    string_concat(S, H, S1),
    string_concat(S1, ' ', S2),
    echo(S2, T).

I compile and test with the following Makefile (GNU make on Linux):

SHELL:=/bin/bash

.PHONY: all
all: echo

%: %.pl
    swipl -q -t main -o $@ -c $^

.PHONY: clean
clean::
    $(RM) echo

.PHONY: test
test:: echo
    diff (</bin/echo) <(./echo)
    diff (</bin/echo foo) <(./echo foo)
    diff (</bin/echo foo bar) <(./echo foo bar)

It can be run like this: ./echo foo bar.

Answer 1

Please consider using format/2 for formatting output.

You do not need so many concatenations!

Also, check out the following sample query and interaction:

?- main([test]).
test
true ;
test 
true ;
false.

This shows that internally, there are choice-points left, and in fact even alternative solutions.

Ideally, the predicate should be deterministic, i.e., succeed exactly once.