Re: [Caml-list] Type abstraction and (polymorphic) equality

[Christophe TROESTLER <debian00@tiscali.be>]

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> 
> >   - One introduces the same capability of providing a special equality
> >     (comparison) for certain types but, during compilation, "expand"
> >     functions till the type for "=" is given by known functions
> >     (something like a "generic" equality).  I guess however that that
> >     may cause problems with separate compilation...
> 
> Yes. It seems that this kind of thing is best done by a MLton-like
> compiler.  If this is a trade-off then I prefer OCaml's current
> position - MLton is an order of magnitude slower to compile small
> programs, no dynamic code loading, no marshalling etc.

Well I was more thinking of overloading equality in a GCaml manner
(http://www.yl.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~furuse/gcaml/) which offers you
more, not less.  However, I do not know how much GCaml actually tries
to reduce the performance hit by compiling monomorphically whenever
possible...

Cheers,
ChriS