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   SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 1998-2026 Paulo Moura <pmoura@logtalk.org>
   SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0

   Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
   you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
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.. rst-class:: align-right

**built-in method**

.. index:: pair: expand_term/2; Built-in method
.. _methods_expand_term_2:

``expand_term/2``
=================

Description
-----------

::

   expand_term(Term, Expansion)

Expands a term. The most common use is to expand a grammar rule into a
clause. Users may override the default Logtalk grammar rule translator
by defining clauses for the :ref:`methods_term_expansion_2` hook predicate.

The expansion works as follows: if the first argument is a variable,
then it is unified with the second argument; if the first argument is
not a variable and there are local or inherited clauses for the
``term_expansion/2`` hook predicate within scope, then this predicate is
called to provide an expansion that is then unified with the second
argument; if the ``term_expansion/2`` predicate is not used and the
first argument is a compound term with functor ``(-->)/2`` then the
default Logtalk grammar rule translator is used, with the resulting
clause being unified with the second argument; when the translator is
not used, the two arguments are unified. The ``expand_term/2`` predicate
may return a single term or a list of terms.

This built-in method may be used to expand a grammar rule into a clause
for use with the built-in database methods.

Automatic term expansion is only performed at compile-time (to expand
terms read from a source file) when using a :term:`hook object`. This
predicate can be used by the user to manually perform term expansion
at runtime (for example, to convert a grammar rule into a clause).

Modes and number of proofs
--------------------------

::

   expand_term(?term, ?term) - one

Errors
------

(none)

Examples
--------

(none)

.. seealso::

   :ref:`methods_expand_goal_2`,
   :ref:`methods_goal_expansion_2`,
   :ref:`methods_term_expansion_2`
