> 
> Well, yes, this is what the manual says and guarantees. However,
> everybody does expect lexicographical ordering here. In particular,
> it would be natural to have
> 

No, I expect as fast as possible ordering to speed up Sets and Maps
as much as possible.

It is easy to write in C or in Caml (with Obj) polymorphic lexicographic comparison
if you need it. You could even start with the original compare of OCaml in compare.c if I remember well.

Now remains the question of having both a "fast_compare" (comparing size first for both string and
arrays which is not the case now) and "lex_compare" in the library ... But it does not bother me too
much.

> compare (Array.of_list x) (Array.of_list y) = compare x y

This would become true if the hd of the list was at the rigth of the tl like in

type 'a mylist =
  Nil
| Cons of 'a mylist * 'a

let rec mylist_to_list = function
  Nil -> []
| Cons(l,x) -> x::mylist_to_list l

let my_list_to_array l = Array.of_list (mylist_to_list l)

let l1 = Cons(Nil,1)
let l2 = Cons(Cons(Nil,2),1)
let b = compare (my_list_to_array l1) (my_list_to_array l2) = compare l1 l2

So this property is not really that natural.

-- 
Christophe Raffalli
Universite de Savoie
Batiment Le Chablais, bureau 21
73376 Le Bourget-du-Lac Cedex

tel: (33) 4 79 75 81 03
fax: (33) 4 79 75 87 42
mail: Christophe.Raffalli@univ-savoie.fr
www: http://www.lama.univ-savoie.fr/~RAFFALLI
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