Re: Imperative programming in Caml

[Walid Taha <taha@cs.chalmers.se>]

Hi John,

> If you write:
> 
> imperative call;
> let x = blah in
>   imperative call
> 
> then you get a little distracted by the indentation.  

Got it!

> Mmm.  I don't think you're going to have much success at showing that
> O'Caml is a reasonable language without using at least some
> polymorphism.  Perhaps this restatement of my previous code would
> help, though:
> 
> type optional_int =
>        | No_Int
>        | Some_Int of int

I feel you were "righter" the first time.  An "option" type is somehow
semanticaly implict in having "null/nill" in every pointer.  So, I think
it is reasonable to interpreter "'a pointer" as "'a option ref".  This
also suggests a naturally way to translate imperative programs to
functional programs systematically.

Thanks again for the great feedback.

Walid.