Re: [Caml-list] Scripting in ocaml

[Serge Aleynikov <serge@hq.idt.net>]

Chad Perrin wrote:
 > On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 09:59:15AM -0500, Serge Aleynikov wrote:
 >> I believe that introducing strict typing in the language might help in
 >> bridging static typing and dynamic loading.  Strict typing would allow
 >> to do run-time type verification and type-specific guard checks.
 >> Though, this would no longer be Ocaml as we know it today.  ;-)
 >
 > I think you lost me.  What do you mean by "strict typing" such that
 > OCaml doesn't do it?  From what I've seen, OCaml is both statically and
 > strongly typed.
 >

What I meant by "strict typing" was performing type checks *at runtime*, 
i.e. that there are no unsafe operations.

Say, as an example, doing type checks of function arguments at runtime:

let f = fun i when is_integer (i) -> i
           | x when is_float   (x) -> int_of_float x;;

(raising Bad_match of some sort if neither one of the two guards pass)

Direct application of this could be for making the Marshal/Unmarshal 
modules more safe when marshaling data over files/sockets between 
applications written in heterogeneous languages.

Serge


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Serge Aleynikov
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