Re: [Caml-list] parameterized pattern

[brogoff <brogoff@speakeasy.net>]

On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, skaller wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-11-09 at 05:19 +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> > On Thursday 09 November 2006 01:45, brogoff wrote:
> > > It's a pity, as I've often wished that OCaml supported the extensional
> > > polymorphism that GCaml has, but I don't think that's going to happen.
> > > It would probaby make more sense to create a separate language at this
> > > point, since OCaml is complicated enough.
> >
> > I think F# provides some form of extensional polymorphism.

I just did a quick scan of some F# docs and I saw nothing. What did you have in
mind?

> > I'm not convinced that it is a good idea yet...

For almost any given language feature, there will be people who like it, and
people who don't. Do you think having class based OO in OCaml is a good idea?
I find it useful, especially since OCaml records are far too restrictive, but
I hope that in some future ML that there are other approaches as the
class/object system is complex, and the interactions with "core ML + modules"
is tricky.

That said, the class system is being used and it won't go away, and some
people really like it.

> Well FYI Felix has traditional (open) overloading, but since it
> doesn't allow traditional C++ style dependent name lookup because
> that would destroy parametricity of polymorphic functions,
> something else was needed.
>
> So it now has first order typeclasses to solve this problem.

Did you consider GCaml style generic functions?

-- Brian