Re: [Caml-list] Expanding the Float Array tag

[oleg@okmij.org]

I am curious about the focus on generalizing double_tag or
double_array_tag when there is already a seemingly good candidate for
tagging values that should not be scanned. I mean the
string_tag. Please search the OCaml code for string_tag and
String_tag. You see it is mentioned in generic routines like
generic comparison compare.c -- which uses memcpy anyway, thus
treating the string just like a sequence of bytes. Other generic
functions like hash are similar. The only other non-trivial use of
string_tag is in printexc and the likes. Those cases are indeed
problematic. Other than them, string_tag can denote arbitrary opaque
byte array and noone will notice. Incidentally, if by string we mean
UTF-8 or UTF-16 string, it is essentially a sequence of bytes anyway.