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From: Andreas Rossberg <rossberg@mpi-sws.org>
To: Lauri Alanko <la@iki.fi>
Cc: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] What is an applicative functor?
Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 13:41:53 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <07069CB7-55C2-41B0-B75A-C071A47789DF@mpi-sws.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20110408212339.GD5064@melkinpaasi.cs.helsinki.fi>

On Apr 8, 2011, at 23:23, Lauri Alanko wrote:
> I'm not sure if there really is an "absence": functions over
> first-class modules _are_ generative functors for all practical
> purposes. The only problem is that they only support type constraints
> for first-order types (and even this can be circumvented with a bit of
> magic).

Well, true, but IMO the first-order limitation is a severe one. Also,  
you cannot abstract over signatures that way, but admittedly, there  
are very few practical uses of that in current OCaml. Not sure what  
"magic" you have in mind, though.

In practical terms, however, I don't think it is convenient enough to  
keep wrapping and unwrapping modules into first-class values just to  
emulate generative functors. Especially since this involves cumbersome  
type annotations.

/Andreas


  parent reply	other threads:[~2011-04-09 11:42 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 27+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2011-04-07 21:12 Dawid Toton
2011-04-07 21:49 ` Gerd Stolpmann
2011-04-08  0:44   ` [Caml-list] " Dawid Toton
2011-04-08  1:34     ` Gerd Stolpmann
2011-04-08  6:50   ` [Caml-list] " Andreas Rossberg
2011-04-08  8:04     ` Alain Frisch
2011-04-08  8:20       ` Jacques Garrigue
2011-04-08  8:38         ` Jacques Garrigue
2011-04-08  8:44         ` Alain Frisch
2011-04-08 10:09           ` Jacques Garrigue
2011-04-08 11:25           ` Julien Signoles
2011-04-08 11:58             ` Alain Frisch
2011-04-11  7:10               ` Julien Signoles
2011-04-11  7:21                 ` Julien Signoles
2011-04-08 13:43           ` rossberg
2011-04-08 16:26             ` Julien Signoles
2011-04-13  2:36             ` Lucas Dixon
2011-04-13  7:23               ` Andreas Rossberg
2011-04-15  3:08                 ` Lucas Dixon
2011-04-19 14:04                   ` Andreas Rossberg
2011-04-08 16:43     ` Till Varoquaux
2011-04-08 17:35       ` Alain Frisch
2011-04-08 18:44       ` Andreas Rossberg
2011-04-08 21:23     ` Lauri Alanko
2011-04-08 21:34       ` Guillaume Yziquel
2011-04-09 11:41       ` Andreas Rossberg [this message]
2011-04-08  5:35 ` Stefan Holdermans

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