Re: easy print and read (was: [Caml-list] Why are arithmetic functions not polymorph?)

[brogoff@speakeasy.net]

On Sat, 7 Jun 2003, Jun.Furuse@inria.fr wrote:
> Yes, in this case, it is easy to tell that there is only one
> applicable typing for plus one two, that is plus : float -> float -> float.
> But in general, nubmer of type case combinations may increase quite
> easily and searching applicable typing from them becomes quite inefficient.
> Moreover, when we have recursive generic values, the search space may
> be infinite! Therefore, we must restrict the search space of type case
> combinations in some manner (otherwise, typing may never terminates). 
> 
> The restriciton in the G'Caml implementation is quite simple, 
> therefore you may feel some inconvenience: the type of plus one two 
> is not inferred automatically, for example.

Hi,
    I understand the pragmatics. If it turns out that this is painful in 
practice for cases like linear algebra or numerics libraries where the 
generic values are not recursive, I hope that a less restrictive rule can be 
adopted. I don't think that the hacks used by other languages which have 
types which throw the type checker into a loop (setting some iteration limit) 
are so bad, and I think they can be applied here. 

    Right now we don't have any significant practice to go on, so I think the 
conservative rule is OK, since, as you point out, it is simple. It's a bit 
weird that the example I posted works if the order is switched in the 
declaration of "plus". 

-- Brian


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