Comment author: administrator

I have just updated camlidl from CVS and found out that [unique] attribute do
not work any longer. The declaration

typedef [unique,string] char* OptionalString;

now generates

type optionalString = string

instead of

type optionalString = string option

as it did before. [ptr] attribute does not work also. It also seems that you
decided to change the default string and bigarray attribute from [unique] to
[ref] (if I understand compiler/parse_aux.ml correctly).

Correct. I got enough complaints about the old behavior
(i.e. pointer default attribute should not apply to strings or
arrays). However, due to a weakness of the current parsing of attributes,

    typedef [unique,string] char* OptionalString;

doesn't do what you want (a possibly NULL string), but

    typedef [string,unique] char* OptionalString;

does. I'll try to fix this soon.

Why this was not mentioned in the "Changes"? :-)

Quoting from Changes:

• Strings, arrays and bigarrays are now non-NULL if "unique" is not specified,
  even if the pointer default is "unique".

Might have been phrased more clearly, perhaps.

• Xavier Leroy

Comment author: administrator

[string,unique] works as expected, [unique,string] does not, to be fixed.