SWI-Prolog 7.7.1 Reference Manual: Section 2.6

## 2.6 Online Help

SWI-Prolog provides an online help system that covers this manual. If the XPCE graphics system is available, online help opens a graphical window. Otherwise the documentation is shown in the Prolog console. The help system is controlled by the predicates below. Note that this help system only covers the core SWI-Prolog manual. The website11http://www.swi-prolog.org provides an integrated manual that covers the core system as well as all standard extension packages. It is possible to install the SWI-Prolog website locally by cloning the website repository git://www.swi-prolog.org/home/pl/git/plweb.git and following the instructions in the `README` file.

help
  Equivalent to `help(help/1)`.
help(+What)
  Show specified part of the manual. What is one of:

  <Name>/<Arity> | Give help on specified predicate
  <Name> | Give help on named predicate with any arity or C interface function with that name
  <Section> | Display specified section. Section numbers are dash-separated numbers: `2-3` refers to section 2.3 of the manual. Section numbers are obtained using apropos/1.

  Examples:

  `?- help(assert).` | Give help on predicate assert
  `?- help(3-4).` | Display section 3.4 of the manual
  `?- help('PL_retry').` | Give help on interface function PL_retry()

  See also apropos/1 and the SWI-Prolog home page at http://www.swi-prolog.org, which provides a FAQ, an HTML version of the manual for online browsing, and HTML and PDF versions for downloading.

apropos(+Pattern)
  Display all predicates, functions and sections that have Pattern in their name or summary description. Lowercase letters in Pattern also match a corresponding uppercase letter. Example:

  `?- apropos(file).` | Display predicates, functions and sections that have `file' (or `File', etc.) in their summary description.

explain(+ToExplain)
  Give an explanation on the given `object'. 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.
explain(+ToExplain, -Explanation)
  Unify Explanation with an explanation for ToExplain. Backtracking yields further explanations.