Most concretely I mean it in the context of the common auxiliary-predicate-with-an-accumulator pattern: foo_bar(Foo, Bar) :- foo_bar_aux(Foo, Bar,

Most concretely I mean it in the context of the common auxiliary-predicate-with-an-accumulator pattern: foo_bar(Foo, Bar) :- foo_bar_aux(Foo, Bar, 0). foo_bar_aux(Foo, Bar, N) :- ... Which in a language like OCaml would be hiding the loop in a recursive function defined inside the main one: let foo_bar foo = let rec foo_bar_aux n = ... in foo_bar_aux 0 So yes, I think this is what you mean by being the same predicate rather than a "change of scopes". Of course there are many loop-like things that you can nest. If the arguments align just right, you can also use `maplist(maplist(maplist(baz)), ...)` instead of three auxiliary predicates, but I don't encounter many cases where this is possible or desirable.