Re: [Caml-list] Why are arithmetic functions not polymorph?

[John Max Skaller <skaller@ozemail.com.au>]

Brian Hurt wrote:

> I don't want to turn this into a C++ 
> flamefest (had one of those already this week), but in my experience 
> operator overloading is *really* *really* bad.

Not doubt because you had to work on someone else's
stupid code.

There is a clear an obvious need for overloading
aritmetic operators in Ocaml, now it has a reasonably
rich set of arithmetic types (including Big_int etc).
Another needed overload is 'print' (to print some
representation of a value which might be used in
a diagnostic).

There are fairly obvious rules about not
*overusing* a facility. C++ programmers, alas,
are prone to stretching the meager technology
available to them to the limit. One comment I read
on Slash.dot (or was it Freshmeat) about Ocaml
was who ugly it was to write

		print_endline (string_of_int i)

compared to
		cout << i << endl;

To be truthful such longwindedness often
obscures my program logic: the case they make
isn't really sound, but it is not entirely stupid either.

Of course, there is a distinction between
convenience (+ for all arithmetic types),
and dependence (dependent name lookup in templates).
The later is an abuse the *forces* complex overloads
to be defined (so that templates work).

-- 
John Max Skaller, mailto:skaller@ozemail.com.au
snail:10/1 Toxteth Rd, Glebe, NSW 2037, Australia.
voice:61-2-9660-0850


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