From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id UAA21158 for caml-red; Thu, 5 Oct 2000 20:26:56 +0200 (MET DST)
Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA07593 for <caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr>; Thu, 5 Oct 2000 20:14:11 +0200 (MET DST)
Received: from shell5.ba.best.com (shell5.ba.best.com [206.184.139.136])
	by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e95IEAP08261
	for <caml-list@inria.fr>; Thu, 5 Oct 2000 20:14:10 +0200 (MET DST)
Received: from localhost (bpr@localhost)
	by shell5.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) with ESMTP id LAA07439
	for <caml-list@inria.fr>; Thu, 5 Oct 2000 11:14:08 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 11:14:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@best.com>
To: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Undefined evaluation order
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010051046251.22949-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr

Hi,
    It is well known that OCaml has undefined evaluation orders and that
it uses right-to-left ordering. What is the rationale for that decision? 
I remember some discussion of this but I couldn't find it in the Caml list
archives. 

    Besides being surprising for lots of people, it is actually a little
ugly to have to write explicit let bindings to force the order and when
reading files which consist of long records; for instance I much prefer 

type date =
  { year : int
  ; month : int
  ; day : int
  ; hour : int
  ; minute : int
  ; second : int 
  }

let input_date igds =
  { year = input_word igds
  ; month = input_word igds
  ; day = input_word igds
  ; hour = input_word igds
  ; minute = input_word igds
  ; second = input_word igds
  }

to 

let input_date igds =
  let year = input_word igds in
  let month = input_word igds in
  let day = input_word igds in
  let hour = input_word igds in
  let minute = input_word igds in
  let second = input_word igds in
  {  year = year
   ; month = month
   ; day = day
   ; hour = hour
   ; minute = minute
   ; second = second
   }

or even with right-to-left where the order is exactly the opposite of the 
record definition (and of what most readers expect). 

-- Brian