-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 14 August 2008 10:46:41 am Jim Farrand wrote: > Things like the (=) operator in OCaml vex me. One of the big > advantages of static typing and type inference is that stupid > programmer errors are prevented at compile time. However, the (=) > operator in OCaml is effectively meaningless for a lot of types, yet > there is no way to prevent a programmer from accidentally calling it. > > One way to get around this would be to take away (=) and (==) and > replace them with specific versions for each type (just like we already > have (+) and (+.) etc) but this leads to really verbose code. > > Type classes solve this kind of problem very effectively. > > Regards, > Jim >
- From what I was told earlier on this list, if you want type classes in OCaml you go with objects. So you would not have: (=) : 'a -> 'a -> bool But instead: (=) : (#equatable as 'a) -> 'a -> bool where class type equatable = object method equals : 'self -> bool end This gives all the advantages of static typing and type inference and prevents stupid errors and it is meaningful for all types that it is implemented for. Peng -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIpE11fIRcEFL/JewRAmyEAKCIbPDMFVh+zuCQ5uD/t+FNPXRJ2gCgwTTl ZELl4dYgZvnh8cAhlnN2gb0= =7pTp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management: http://yquem.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/caml-list Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs