Re: [Caml-list] questions

[Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

I'll answer the questions that I can...

On Tuesday 24 March 2009 19:42:40 John Prince wrote:
> I'm new to ocaml and coming (most recently) from ruby, so I was wondering
> if there are equivalents to some of the things that I find handy in ruby:

You may find the OCaml Beginners mailing list hosted by Yahoo to be more 
productive for simple questions.

> 2) Is there something like 'ri' in ocaml?  (commandline access to basic
> documentation)

I highly recommend ocamlbrowser but it is not CLI.

> 3) Is there consensus on the best/fastest xml parser?

I use XML-Light whenever it can handle it (it supports only a small part of 
XML but is very easy to use) and PXP otherwise. You might also check out the 
well-reputed Expat bindings but I have not tried them.

> Where is the message archive located?

For this list, here:

  http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-list/index.en.html

> Is it searchable? 

Google indexes it well.

> Can someone point me to the best resource(s) for newbies?

Start at the community OCaml tutorial wiki and search the links therein.

  http://www.ocaml-tutorial.org/

There is some interesting propaganda here:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/ocaml/benefits/

> I have been reading through what's out there, but its always nice to get a
> recommendation.

Two beginners books are my own "OCaml for Scientists" and Tim Rentsch's "The 
Objective CAML Programming Language". Hopefully Jason Hickey's book will be 
published this year.

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e