Atom table full

[JCK]

Hi all,

I'm getting an "Atom table full" error.  Admittedly, I do not know  
much about the atom table, I didn't even know there was one until I  
found out mine was full.  I read a post in the archives concerning  
this which stated that:  it was planned in the future to have an atom  
table without limitations (which I don't think has been done since I'm  
getting this message); and the only way to change the limit was to  
modify the code and recompile.

The thing is I'm quite sure I don't need that many atoms, the portion  
of my code that seems to be the culprit is a loop which reads in data  
(from mysql), processes the data and writes data back (to mysql).  I  
was running into problems with stack size, so instead of looping  
recursively, I used a 'repeat' which seemed to have improved my stack  
issues but then I got "Atom Table Full'.  I think it's just looping so  
many times that any number of atoms that get created and not destroyed  
will eventually fill the table.  I even exit the 'repeat' loop every X  
number of loops (in hopes of cleaning thing up), and then re-enter the  
'repeat' loop.

I have no need for backtracking during this portion of the code and  
have no need for the data after a loop is completed (it's in mysql).   
So I guess my question is:

(1) is there anyway of clearing the atoms that won't be used again  
from table?
(2) there's nowhere in the loop where a huge number of atoms are  
created.  The only place I can think of there being atoms created is  
after SQL calls when I'm converting and putting the data into prolog  
variables.  Is there anyone else who's had this problem found a  
culprit which is known for creating lots of atoms?
(3) Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance,
JK