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 KAA06143 for caml-red; Thu, 24 Aug 2000 10:51:39 +0200 (MET DST) 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 KAA23500 for ; Thu, 24 Aug 2000 10:50:02 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e7O8ntH07546; Thu, 24 Aug 2000 10:49:55 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA07571; Thu, 24 Aug 2000 10:49:55 +0200 (MET DST) From: Pierre Weis Message-Id: <200008240849.KAA07571@pauillac.inria.fr> Subject: Re: Return type of procedures? In-Reply-To: <39A369AD.E640C222@maxtal.com.au> from John Max Skaller at "Aug 23, 100 04:05:33 pm" To: skaller@maxtal.com.au (John Max Skaller) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 10:49:55 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: caml-list@inria.fr X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr > But the other thing you miss is that even in ocaml, environments > are NOT immutable: there are mutable fields, and thus mutable > data structures like Hashtbl. The fact is, some things are easier > to express in a stateful manner than a functional one. Strictly speaking, environments in Caml ARE immutable: there is no way to change the binding of an identifier. What can be mutated are designated sub-parts of values bound to identifiers. Pierre Weis INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://cristal.inria.fr/~weis/