Record field label locality

[Brighten Godfrey <pbg@cs.berkeley.edu>]

Hi,

Here's something that I've wondered about for years; maybe someone  
here can enlighten me.  One of the few major annoyances in OCaml code  
style is that if I define a record in one module, say a Graph module:

     type t = {
         nodes : node_t array;
         }

then when I use it in another module, say with a graph variable `g',  
then I have to write `g.Graph.nodes' rather than `g.nodes'.

I can understand why a record field label has to be uniquely  
identified.  But can't the explicit naming of the Graph module  
usually be avoided, since the compiler will know that `g' is a  
`Graph.t'?  For example if I write something like

     let g : Graph.t = make_graph () in
     g.nodes

it seems to me that on the second line, the type of `g' and hence the  
meaning of `g.nodes' is unambiguous.

Thanks!
~Brighten Godfrey