Re: [Caml-list] troubles with polymorphic variant in class

[skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Mon, 2004-06-14 at 02:05, François-Xavier HOUARD wrote:

> The method add_child has type ([> `Whatever ] as 'a) -> unit where 'a
> is unbound

> _Is there another way to make it ??? 

The notation [> `X] does not denote a type, but a family
of types (all types containing variant `X). Alternatively
you might say it is a type constraint.

But a list must have elements of a definite type.
You can define the type as for ordinary variants:

type widget = [ `Whatever | `Window of window | `Button of button]

and now make a widget list. 

Unfortunately, you cannot add child widgets to a button
like this:

class button = object 
  val mutable (childs:widget list)
  method add_child x = childs <- x::childs
end

because button isn't defined yet .. and neither
is window... so you can't define widget.

Unfortunately the obvious way to fix this doesn't
work due to a syntactic problem in Ocaml:

type widget = ...
and class window = ...
and class button = ...

is what you need: mutual recursion. But it isn't allowed
to mutually recurse types and classes (not even class types).

So a direct solution is unfortunately impossible.
You must add a type parameter to each class like this:

class ['w] button' = ... (childs: 'w list)
class ['w] window' = .. .(childs: 'w list) ...

and now you can define:

type 'w widget' = [`Window of ['w] window' | ...

Because these things all use a parameter,
they can all be defined without any mutual
recursion. So now you do this:

(* fixpoint *)
type widget = 'w widget' as 'w 

which effectively solves the type equation
'w = 'w widget (and names the result widget).
Now define non-polymorphic classes:

class button = [widget] button'
class window = [widget] window'

This is not so bad for a single parameter 'w.
For multiple parameters the notation soon becomes
too unwieldy to be practical. 

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller@users.sf.net
voice: 061-2-9660-0850, 
snail: PO BOX 401 Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
Checkout the Felix programming language http://felix.sf.net



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