0004807: class initialization order

Notes
(0005564) lavi (reporter) 2010-06-17 16:41	I have no news about this. Is it really a feature that side effect in class are done immediatly, but delayed at object creation when under an applied function ? If so it should be docummented.

(0005565) garrigue (manager) 2010-06-18 02:22	I missed (or forgot?) your first report. I agree that the discrepancy is disturbing. However, fixing it would require changing the internal representation of classes. Namely, currently an object constructor is a function taking first the object we are constructing, and then its other arguments. So we cannot partially apply it at class creation. In order to do that, it would need to take the object we are filling as last argument. Before 2003, side-effects in constructors were evaluated once per class, which complicated the compilation of classes defined by applications. But this doesn't seem to change the behaviour in your examples.

(0005567) garrigue (manager) 2010-06-18 04:59	I corrected the reference manual to specify the evaluation time. Correcting the implementation to allow side-effects at class creation time seemed too complex, and not very useful. Note that early evaluation occurs only when the let is at the very beginning of the class. For instance, in the following example, evaluation occurs only when an object is created: class c = object inherit (let () = print_endline "Hello" in object end) end

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