Re: [Caml-list] ANNOUNCE : libsndfile-ocaml alpha

[Erik de Castro Lopo <mle+ocaml@mega-nerd.com>]

skaller wrote:

> type ('a, 'b) kind 
> To each element kind is associated a Caml type, which is the type of
> Caml values that can be stored in the big array or read back from it.
> This type is not necessarily the same as the type of the array elements
> proper: for instance, a big array whose elements are of kind float32_elt
> contains 32-bit single precision floats, but reading or writing one of
> its elements from Caml uses the Caml type float, which is 64-bit double
> precision floats. 

But why is taht any better than the existing Sndfile read method
which already returns an array of Ocmal floats. See:

     http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/Ocaml/Sndfile.html

which has:

    val sf_read : sndfile_t -> float array -> int
    val sf_write : sndfile_t -> float array -> int

(well actually sndfile_t has been changed to Sndfile.t).

Since it is already possible to read Ocaml floats (which are normalised
to the range [-1.0, 1.0]) why would anyone want to ready any other data
type?

Erik

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"Do I do everything in C++ and teach a course in advanced swearing?"
-- David Beazley at IPC8, on choosing a language for teaching