From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id QAA03445 for caml-redistribution; Sun, 7 Dec 1997 16:46:10 +0100 (MET)
Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA01947 for <caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr>; Sun, 7 Dec 1997 14:41:42 +0100 (MET)
Received: from tobago.inria.fr (tobago.inria.fr [128.93.8.21])
	by concorde.inria.fr (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA09208
	for <caml-list@inria.fr>; Sun, 7 Dec 1997 14:41:40 +0100 (MET)
Received: (from doligez@localhost) by tobago.inria.fr (8.6.10/8.6.6) id OAA10810 for caml-list@inria.fr; Sun, 7 Dec 1997 14:41:39 +0100
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 14:41:39 +0100
From: Damien Doligez <Damien.Doligez@inria.fr>
Message-Id: <199712071341.OAA10810@tobago.inria.fr>
To: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re:  mixed customizable external data types in Caml
Sender: weis

>From: Basile STARYNKEVITCH <Basile.Starynkevitch@cea.fr>
>
>When using caml as an embedding langage (concretly, caml used as a
>scripting langage to existing numerical applications coded in Fortran
>or C) it would be very nice to be able to have a Caml value containing 
>both Caml values (ie pointers or tagged integers) and other stuff,
>such (as a Fortran matrix or whatever).
>
>Of course it is already possible to use an arbitrary pointer to
>whatever C or Fortran data.
>
>But it would be nice to be able to have all of Caml memory management
>stuff (in particular garbage collection and marshalling) in mixed data 
>types.

You can have garbage collection easily: put your foreign data in one
object, and your caml values in another object, along with a pointer
to the first object.

I'd say the real interest would be in marshalling, equality, and
ordering.  And I see a big problem with unmarshaling.  How does the
system find the unmarshaling function ?  There is no pointer to the
descriptor in the object, because the object does not exist yet.

-- Damien