Re: [Caml-list] Frustrated Beginner

[Brian Hurt <bhurt@spnz.org>]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, Sven Luther wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 23, 2003 at 11:11:19AM -0500, Brian Hurt wrote:
> > > My biggest source of problems seems to be the syntax. I'm totally
> > > confused as far as ; vs ;; vs nothing, when to use ( ), and things of
> > > the like. 
> > 
> > This took some rethinking on my part as well.  The trick is to remember
> > that ';' is an operator, like '+' and '.' are.  Actually, the best
> > comparison is with the comma operator in C.  If the type of '+' is int ->
> > int -> int ('+' takes two int parameters and returns an int), then the
> > type of the ';' operator is unit -> 'a -> 'a (or more correctly, 'a -> 'b
> > -> 'b).  One you start thinking of ';' as an operator and not a statement
> > seperator, it becomes more obvious that an ocaml function body is simply a
> > single expression, and not a series of statements.  ';;' is more close to
> > what ';' in most languages mean- it's what ends an expression.
> 
> Mmm, not really convinced. For me ;, is a shortcut for :
> 
>   let () = ... in

Or more accurately
	let _ = ... in ...

> 
> Actually, i believe that both constructs result in the exact same code.
> 
> That said, i guess it would not really help someone coming from the
> imperative world, and not used to the let ... = ... in construct.

Yep.  The change in thinking is that ';' doesn't seperate statements, but
combines two expressions into one expression.  Your understanding is more
technically correct, but I was trying to draw analogies to '+' and ','.

-- 
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                                - Gene Spafford 
Brian

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