From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.83]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id p2Q488SG016797 for ; Sat, 26 Mar 2011 05:08:08 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: ArgDAExljU3RVaE2kGdsb2JhbACYMTGMdggUAQEBAQkJDQcUBCGnZZIciGyDD4JaBIx1iQo6 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.63,246,1299452400"; d="scan'208";a="94984678" Received: from mail-fx0-f54.google.com ([209.85.161.54]) by mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/RC4-SHA; 26 Mar 2011 05:08:04 +0100 Received: by fxm11 with SMTP id 11so2647671fxm.27 for ; Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:08:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.223.117.134 with SMTP id r6mr1775799faq.147.1301112484063; Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:08:04 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: mlin@mlin.net Received: by 10.223.73.196 with HTTP; Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:07:44 -0700 (PDT) X-Originating-IP: [74.61.199.33] In-Reply-To: <20110326011208.GA3915@melkinpaasi.cs.helsinki.fi> References: <20110326011208.GA3915@melkinpaasi.cs.helsinki.fi> From: Mike Lin Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:07:44 -0400 X-Google-Sender-Auth: ilHYiW-wdAjaGbM3QqlWH4yZ7Uw Message-ID: To: caml-list@inria.fr Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by walapai.inria.fr id p2Q488SG016797 Subject: Re: [Caml-list] What are "Language extensions"? My strong impression is that many of the "language extensions" are each an INRIA student's thesis :) On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 9:12 PM, Lauri Alanko wrote: > In the O'Caml reference manual, the actual language specification is > split into two parts, "The Objective Caml language" and "Language > extensions". I'm curious as to what this division indicates about the > status of different features of the language. The manual itself > doesn't help much, since the extensions chapter only opens with: > >        This chapter describes language extensions and convenience >        features that are implemented in Objective Caml, but not >        described in the Objective Caml reference manual. > > In other words, "this chapter is for the stuff that isn't in the > previous chapter". Not very informative. > > What, then, does it mean for something to be an extension instead of a > part of the "basic" language? Is it about backwards compatibility > (e.g. the basic language is guaranteed to work with every 3.x > release)? Or about forward compatibility (e.g. some extensions might > not be supported in a future 3.x release)? Or about stability? Will > some of the extensions eventually be incorporated into the "basic" > language? > > The structure of the manual clearly implies that I as a programmer > should take into account that a feature is an "extension". I just > have no idea what I should do with that knowledge. > > > Lauri > > -- > Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives: > https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs > >