## A.19 library(gensym): Generate unique symbols

Gensym (Generate Symbols) is an old library for generating unique symbols (atoms). Such symbols are generated from a base atom which gets a sequence number appended. Of course there is no guarantee that `catch22` is not an already defined atom and therefore one must be aware these atoms are only unique in an isolated context.

The SWI-Prolog gensym library is thread-safe. The sequence numbers are global over all threads and therefore generated atoms are unique over all threads.

gensym(+Base, -Unique)
  Generate <Base>1, <Base>2, etc atoms on each subsequent call. Note that there is nothing that prevents other parts of the application to‘invent’the same identifier. The predicate gensym/2 is thread-safe in the sense that two threads generating identifiers from the same Base will never generate the same identifier.
  See also
    uuid/1, term_hash/2, variant_sha1/2 may be used to generate various unique or content-based identifiers safely.
reset_gensym
  Reset gensym for all registered keys. This predicate is available for compatibility only. New code is strongly advised to avoid the use of reset_gensym or at least to reset only the keys used by your program to avoid unexpected side effects on other components.
reset_gensym(+Base)
  Restart generation of identifiers from Base at <Base>1. Used to make sure a program produces the same results on subsequent runs. Use with care.