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From: Yann =?iso-8859-1?q?R=E9gis-Gianas?= <yann@lrde.epita.fr>
Organization: LRDE
Subject: Fwd: Re: [Caml-list] mutually referencing compilation units
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 09:58:28 +0200
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Le Jeudi 19 Septembre 2002 05:09, John Max Skaller a =E9crit :
> Xavier Leroy wrote:
> > > Is the fact that two mutually referencing units can't be compiled
> > > supposed to be a Good Thing?
> >
> > [..]
> > However, there are deep semantical and
> > type-theoretical reasons that make it hard to allow cross-module
> > recursion in ML.  This is actually a research area that is still
> > largely open.
>
> [...]
> The constraint only applies to open directives
> and is related to name lookup, not typing.

=09Linking of values are now well formalized in calculus like m-calculus =
(Wells
and Vestegaard) or CMS (Ancona and Zucca). The principal idea is to defin=
e
link between components and variables apart from their definition. Units =
of
Flatt or Felleisen are also a good example of implementation of this idea=
=2E

=09However, "deferred types" (which allows a way to obtain mutually recur=
sive
types across modules) are not managed in these formalisms The main proble=
m
with ML family's languages may be that they need a context to type terms =
and
that incomplete contexts leads to the impossibility of typing modules ...=
 I
am not yet a specialist of the field but you can read the following artic=
les
to understand the general problem of mutually recursive modules (aka mixi=
ns).

J. B. Wells and Rene Vestergaard.
Equational reasoning for linking with first-class primitive modules.
2000

Tom Hirschowitz and Xavier Leroy
Mixin Modules in a Call-by-Value Setting
2001

D. Ancona and E. Zucca
A calculus of module systems
2001

Karl Crary and Robert Harper and Sidd Puri
What is a Recursive Module?
1999

- --
Yann Regis-Gianas

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